Each week, the Record (using a script in R) randomly selects a student at the College for our One in Two Thousand feature, excluding current Record board members. This week, Annie Morrison ’26 discussed Unitarian Universalism, Kesha, and theatre. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Haley Zimmerman (HZ): You’re a history and religion major. What’s your favorite history, and what’s your favorite religion?
Annie Morrison (AM): My favorite religion — I did a research paper for one of my religion classes about Unitarian Universalism [UU].
HZ: Explain what that is.
AM: A lot of people don’t consider it a religion, but it’s technically an offshoot of Christianity. It’s a religion focused on social justice and individualism where each person is charged with coming up with their own understanding of spirituality and God and all that stuff. You can call upon any religious text, and it’s very focused on community. My camp is UU, so I was doing the project in relation to my camp.
HZ: What’s your favorite kind of history?
AM: That’s hard to choose because I feel like a lot of history is really bad. I focus on colonization and decolonization. So, maybe my favorite history is decolonization — how all these people and places are finding freedom.
HZ: That’s good history. Can you tell me what drew you to pursue these two majors?
AM: I would say I’m a history major because, in 10th grade, I took global history for the first time ever, and I was like, “Oh shit, there’s all this history I didn’t know existed.” And [for] whatever global history we were learning, my teacher showed us how it impacts the world today. I had, concerningly, no idea that that was why you studied history, and so I was like, “Oh my God, that’s so cool.” I study history to understand the current world. I’ve always been curious about religious existential questions, and it’s very interesting to see how people around the world and across time have answered those questions. I think that it tells us a lot about what it means to be human, why we’re here on this earth, and what makes us similar.
HZ: I know you do theatre. Do you identify as a theatre kid?
AM: I would say I do identify as a theatre kid, slightly shamefully perhaps, but I feel like I can’t really renounce that identity. That would be unfair. You know, justice for theatre kids — what we do is actually kind of cool sometimes.
HZ: Do you have a dream role?
AM: My dream role is Donna from Mamma Mia! I love the songs. She’s so goofy. I love how camp that musical is. I think I could sing it. It’s, frankly, so iconic.
HZ: If you could swap lives with a celebrity for one day, which celebrity would you swap with?
AM: I don’t know much about celebrities, but recently I’ve become a very big Kesha fan. Love Kesha. Love what she’s doing. Love how unserious she is. My favorite song in the world is “TiK ToK” by Kesha. I would love to just see what she’s up to.
HZ: Related to this, your friend Emery Dunbar [’26] asked me to ask you, are we who we are?
AM: Are we who we are? You never really know. Kesha says that we are who we are, but I don’t know. We might be 10,000 bugs in a skin suit. I hope not. That’s kind of what the religion major is trying to figure out. Are we really who we are?
HZ: You mentioned summer camp. Tell me about summer camp.
AM: Summer camp is the best place in the world. It’s UU. It’s tiny and very social justice and community oriented, and we have no budget, basically. Being a counselor means creating activities out of almost nothing, which is so cool. I was a counselor there this summer, and I have been a counselor during other summers, as well. I want to be a teacher, and camp is the best thing that I feel I could ever do, because you get to create a community for children outside of the realm of home and school, and you get to show them that they can be treated differently. A lot of the campers are gay and trans, and having a community of people that really accept them and are like them is so powerful. I learned so much about myself there, and I learned so much about the world. Going there as a camper made me who I am today — taught me how to love other people.
HZ: Could you say it taught you who you are?
AM: It taught me who I am. Although, you know, we might not be who we are.
HZ: Did you have a favorite camper?
AM: I did have a favorite camper. He was so chaotic. He lost all of his underwear on laundry day, and then he had one pair of underwear. He was 13. He took the underwear into the shower with him as a means of washing it, and then would put his sopping wet underwear on immediately and come up to me and be like, “I’m soaked right now. My underwear is wet.” We had to go out and buy him a whole new thing of underwear, because he lost all of it.
HZ: Speed round: Favorite establishment on Spring Street?
AM: Blue Mango.
HZ: Favorite place to do your homework?
AM: Zilkha [Center].
HZ: And favorite place to procrastinate?
AM: Also Zilkha.
HZ: Favorite Goodrich Coffee Bar drink?
AM: Iced latte with whole milk.
HZ: Favorite website?
AM: The snake game. I don’t know what website that is, but the snake game is definitely a major player in my life.
HZ: Favorite pasta shape?
AM: I don’t know what they’re called, but the little curly guys.
HZ: Favorite sports team?
AM: Obviously the Mets. I’m extremely passionate about the Mets. Today is a really big day. They’re playing two games to determine whether they’re going to go to the playoffs or not.
HZ: Do you think they’re going to win?
AM: No. Being a Mets fan, this is important. Being a Mets fan is a life of pain. It’s a life of disappointment. The thing about the Mets is they will always maybe be good, and they always disappoint. And so a really big part of who I am today is my history as a Mets fan. You know, I have hope, and I think they’ll disappoint me.
[Editor’s note: The Mets made the playoffs.]
