Caroline Bonner

My name is Caroline Bonner, and I am from Houston, Texas. There are three things I'm particularly particular about: redundancy, being serious when needed, and my bookshelf.

I've found over the course of my life that I am a generalist and not a specialist. I would rather be decent at many things rather than extremely great at one or two. While walking up and down speedway during my first week of classes here, I joined the Origami club, the Engineers for a Sustainable World club, and have made avid plans to flag down whoever runs the "Crochet 4 a Cause" club to serve as an ad-interim for my church knitting club back home. I've never left the country, but I have tried around sixteen different languages on Duolingo and thus acquired an early love for Spanish. As a senior, this passion led me to serve as the president of Memorial High School's National Spanish Honor Society. I was very active in my schools' Women in STEM club, serving as Co-President my senior year. Along with two other Philanthropy Chairs, I planned and ran the Student Council Food Drive my senior year, raising 36,000 cans and feeding nine local Houston food pantries. I graduated as Valedictorian and wished I had had a better yearbook quote. I spent my time outside of the classroom playing Varsity tennis, coaching and swimming on my neighborhood swim team in the summers, and running the Houston Half marathons. My dream has always been to visit the place in central Mexico where the Monarchs migrate every winter, and since I was a kid, I've raised butterflies in my backyard. I have one little sister who I love dearly, and a lazy yellow Labrador. I'm quite terrible at playing make-believe, but I love thinking about new ways to solve problems. As an Environmental Engineer and Plan II Major on campus, I hope to merge my love for nature and for creative thinking in order to help solve major problems that we face as a society today. I have a special interest in water, where it flows, and how we consume it. I love talking to people who like poetry, and I want to memorize another fifty digits of Pi. In my free time, I enjoy trying new restaurants, hanging out with friends, going to church, and identifying birds. I've never solved a Rubik's cube and I have officially given up, but I do love puzzles. Music has also been an important part of my life since the day in first grade when I picked up playing the piano. I love heartfelt conversations and discussing anything philosophic. I've discovered that it's important to love others deeply above all else and trust in God's plan for my life. I don't know what tomorrow holds, and I quite literally never will. All I know is that when I look back on the freshman letter I wrote to my senior-year self at our Forty Acres Retreat, I'll probably laugh at this current version of me who thought she knew so much, and yet perhaps knew hardly anything at all.

Major
Environmental Engineering Honors, Plan II Honors

Honors Program
Honors Engineering and Plan II Honors

Other Academic Interests
Spanish minor

Extracurricular Activities
Chi Omega Sorority, TXLA Master's Swim group, RUF, Young Life

What drew you to the Forty Acres Scholars Program?
The thing that drew me most to the Forty Acres Scholars Program was the comfort of a consistent, driven community. Instead of having to brave college (and life!) alone, I have a full support system of people to fall back in everything I do here and beyond. This makes the hard days easier and the good times even better.