Published on Wellesley Magazine (https://magazine.wellesley.edu)

Azalea Troche ’18 and Elizabeth Kysel ’18 (from left to right)

And suddenly, there was purple. Everywhere. The class of 2018 arrived in late August, quickly donning purple shirts and caps, fanning out over campus. They are 593 strong, hailing from 44 states and the District of Columbia, and from 33 countries. Among their number are poets, marathon runners, bloggers, artists, synchronized skaters, and even the founder of a frozen yogurt shop managed by teenagers. Here are two of the latest crop of purple.

Azalea Troche ’18

Hometown: Garland, Texas
High School: Garland High School

Activities in high school:

Pole vaulting, fashion and design, teaching art to middle-school students, and her favorite, the Garland Hispanic Youth Organization, a service organization that aimed to form a stronger and more involved Hispanic community within her school and city

Why she came to Wellesley:

“I felt such a strong sense of self-confidence from every person I had the chance to meet. I enjoyed the fact that people were comfortable being themselves! … I am a firm believer in will power and passion; Wellesley is a place where I can go far with both!”

What she’s looking forward to:

Studying Arabic and joining Mezcla, the Latin@ organization at Wellesley, “because it will be like a piece of home and because I am excited to be surrounded by so many empowered Latin@s!” (The @ symbol is used to honor multiple genders.)

Elizabeth Kysel ’18

Hometown: Allison Park, Pa.
High School: The Ellis School

Favorite activity in high school:

Girls of Steel, a robotics competition team that she helped found. She and 40 other girls spent up to 25 hours a week building a 120 lb. robot that would play a game with and against others from all over the world. “I now kno w how to use hand tools and complex machinery, write a business plan, work efficiently in a high-stress environment with a diverse group of people, design mechanical systems by hand and on the computer, raise large sums of money, devise branding standards, [and] read mechanical drawings.”

Why she came to Wellesley:

“It had everything I was looking for: lots of foreign-language options, an international-relations major, the ability for me to continue studying engineering, near a big city, and, most importantly, a community that is passionate, engaged, respectful, and curious.”