Q: What is your name, year and major?

A: Sarah Rongey, junior psychology major

Q: How would you describe yourself in three words?

A: 1. Compassionate

2. Kind

3. Loyal

Q: What are you passionate about?

i.e. What do you love doing?

A: “As a psychology major, I’m really passionate about mental health and self-care and self-love… I try to decrease the stigma around mental health in the small ways that I can. I’ve had my own bouts of mental illness with anxiety… I feel like a lot of times mental illness is an invisible thing. People have a hard time talking about it, because it’s not public — it’s not something outward that you can display, but it’s something that you experience physically and mentally… I know that college can be really stressful and really anxiety provoking. [College has] been a time where I can recognize my mental illness for what it really is and get treatment for it, and I think that it has been for my friends as well.”

Q: When and how did you start becoming passionate about it?

A: “Sometime in high school, maybe junior year, I started recognizing my own mental illness. And as silly as it sounds, I had one of those moments where you’re just kind of doing an ordinary thing, but kind of praying just like, ‘Hey, God what do you want me to do?’ He was like ‘I want you to work with people with mental illness.’ I was brushing my teeth when that happened. Ordinary extraordinary moment.”

Q: How does your passion make you a better person?  

A: “It helps me to look for what makes a person unique, and to kind of dig deeper into a person and realize that people aren’t just who they appear to be on the surface level all the time, and that’s totally fine.”

Q: What would you like people to know you for in 10 years?

A: “In 10 years I hope to have a doctorate in psychology. I’m not entirely sure what I want to do after I get my doctorate. I hope that people will know me as a kind person, will know me as someone that they can go to, even if it’s just small circles of people that I know. I want them to know me as reliable. But in a broader sense, I don’t really mind if my name isn’t broadly known — I don’t really care about that. Just in my little circles: Sarah’s a chill person. I can go to her. If something happens to me or if there’s something in my past, I can talk to her about things.”