By any standard Thiru is a high achiever. A double major in finance and neuroscience, she is a graduate of two IU schools, the Kelley School of Business and the College of Arts and Sciences. She gained some highly competitive positions in the Kelley School’s Investment Banking Workshop and as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of PBS Professor Jeff Alberts. All the while she volunteered in organizations at IU and in the community – at the Bloomington courthouse, My Sister’s Closet, and the Autism Mentoring Program, among others – and took on leadership roles in the Kelley School and elsewhere.
But there’s more. Thiru also paid for her education by joining the U.S. Army Reserve, leaving the campus one weekend every month, and missing her second semester freshman year altogether and a half semester along the way to complete combat training. And still, she learned to play the electric guitar and participate in IU’s Beekeeping Club.
Perhaps it was this level of activity – and its enormous challenges – from which she derived some hard-won advice for her 7,000 or so classmates gathered at the stadium, many of whom, as she knew firsthand, are struggling with uncertainty and anxiety about the future. To them she suggested that the solution to this insecurity “isn’t simply to decide what you want to do, but to let yourself be guided by your desire to know. Seek out opportunities to learn, nurture multiple passions, and let these stand as pillars in your journey to post 20’s wisdom.” It was this, she says, that “allowed my vitality as an individual to emerge” as she explored multiple pathways at IU.
The College of Arts