May 6, 2026
By Natalie Tseng, Student Life
Student Life's Junk Journal
When I was a junior in high school, I played a tree in my school musical. Yes—an actual tree. It was straight out of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
I stood on stage in a full camouflage suit with a backpack of branches strapped to me, in front of the entire school. Looking back, it should feel embarrassing. But at the time, I enjoyed it.
I’ve always been drawn to performance; the music, the spectacle, the feeling of being a part of something bigger than yourself. Even if you are just a tree.
Since coming to the University of Michigan, that love hasn’t gone away; it’s shifted.
Now I find myself as a regular audience member, showing up to productions whenever I can. Some of my favorites so far have been Heathers, Titanic, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Cabaret. Each performance feels surprisingly close to something you’d see beyond campus.
Most recently, I attended Into The Woods, a MUSKET production—U-M’s oldest and largest student-run musical theatre organization, supported by the Center for Campus Involvement (CCI).
From choreography to vocals and costumes, everything felt immersive and intentional. Sitting there, it didn’t feel like a student production. I felt like I was sitting in a Broadway performance.
I forgot I was watching my peers on stage.
What struck me most wasn’t what was happening on stage, it was who made it happen.
As I flipped through the playbill I noticed that many of the cast members weren’t musical theatre majors at all. Students studied chemistry and psychology, cognitive science-fields that seem worlds away from the stage.
CCI supports over 1,700 student organizations. If you have a hobby or interest, chances are there’s a student org where you’ll find your people. In these groups, students step into entirely different roles than the ones they hold in classrooms or labs.
A chemistry major becomes an actor. A pre-med student joins a pit orchestra. Someone studying data science spends evenings building sets or designing costumes. These spaces make it possible to try on different identities, even if just for a few hours each week.
That is what makes U-M feel distinct to me. Here, people don’t exist in one lane.
Students are pursuing their careers, exploring passions and making space for both at the same time. You can spend your day in a lab or a lecture hall and still end up under stage lights in the evening, telling a story.
It is special to be able to share a campus—its classrooms, organizations, dining halls and everyday spaces—with peers of such varying talents and passions. In a moment where so much of our world feels divided, and increasingly automated, that sense of community is grounding.
The arts remind us how to feel, how to connect and how to sit in a room together and experience something human.
To be continued in scraps and stickers,
Natalie