By Asha Tompkins, Community Editor
Behind a desk with a laptop covered in multicolor stickers sits a girl wearing a Star Trek T-shirt that depicts Spock motioning the famous hand gesture: “live long and prosper.” Her eyes are fixated on the teacher. Her creativity is prominent to any onlooker, which explains her choice of being an art history major. While freshman Abby Dell’Erba’s journey to pursuing that goal was riddled with hardships, her decision has not been altered.
Dell’Erba is a commuter. Her time at school is spent driving to and from class, waiting eagerly for the next semester to take classes that she has a true passion for.
“I’m not taking any art history classes,” said Dell’Erba. “I have to take a college writing class first. But, I’m taking one required art class.”
Dell’Erba wishes to work in a museum when she graduates. She’s heard some people say that they don’t like art history due to the requirement of sitting in a classroom to learn about it for hours on end. But, that requirement doesn’t bother her. In fact, she she loves it.
“[I took my first art history class] my junior year [in high school.] I just fell in love with it. I knew that I wanted to continue doing it,” she said.
Her talents range from painting, to writing, to cutting out images and placing them on paper and other objects in order to create a unique collage.
“I was homeschooled from preschool ‘til third grade. When you’re homeschooled you don’t do too much school, so I drew a lot,” said Dell’Erba. “In seventh grade, I wrote a book. I lost it, I don’t know where it went, but I wrote a book.”
She also started a blog on Tumblr at the beginning of the summer. She said that no one reads it, as it’s just for her to write and produce to her heart’s content.
“It’s so I’m not keeping [things] to myself,” she said.
She makes sure that she doesn’t keep too much to herself. She voiced that doing so in the past proved to be detrimental.
“I had depression for two years,” said Dell’Erba. “After graduation, my boyfriend left me and my friends didn’t want to be friends anymore because of what I was going through.”
It wasn’t until this summer that Dell’Erba dealt with it. She had “pushed it aside and pretended that it didn’t exist.” After acknowledging that she had depression, she decided it was time for a change.
“It’s kind of [terrible that they left], but it’s okay,” said Dell’Erba. “It just made me realize that I should probably start doing something about it. It was rough, but I got through it and I’m a lot better now for it.”
She expressed that people should not repress their issues. If someone “represses it for too long, it becomes [their] daily life.” An individual could get used to feeling badly.
“The best thing to do is to deal with it when you know that it’s there, instead of just waiting for a big explosion in your life,” she said.
Her explosion happened within a span of two weeks before going into college. She was nervous going into college because of a lack of friends, but she made new friends through her new job and by meeting people at USM.
“I’m actually very thankful that I went through all that. The people in my life were very toxic which did not help my situation at all,” said Dell’Erba. “Now that I look back at that and the way that I’m living my life now, I know that it was supposed to happen. I know that it was really rough and I hated it, but I’m very thankful that it happened. That actually made me who I am today.”
Dell’Erba sits behind a desk that holds her decorated laptop, her eyes fixated on the teacher. To an onlooker, her creativity is prominent. Dell’Erba’s creativity shapes who she is. She plans to pursue her goals of working in a museum, putting the hardships behind her, and a future of history ahead.