Beyond the Books

Honors Students Who Find Their Passions Outside the Classroom

by Antonino Pollina

An immaculate brown leaf crackles underfoot on a crisp fall evening. There’s a moment of silence, a collective inhale between all four players. A tennis ball cuts through the air before slapping against the court with a loud thwack. Miles away, in the soft lamplight of a dorm room, a delicate needle loops under a thin thread of fabric over and over again. The weaver steadies her hands. Monotony can’t give way to carelessness, not after all this time. 

The University of Iowa’s (UI) honors students are a group characterized first and foremost by their drive, their passion. For some honors students, the most meaningful parts of their school lives happen not in classrooms, but on tennis courts and at embroidery hoops.

Amid the academic rigor of the Honors Program, these students have found ways to stay grounded, discovering that personal passions aren’t distractions from success, but essential parts of it.

The tennis courts on the Hawkeye Tennis and Recreation Complex chime with laughter, and the squeak of sneakers on painted courts. Among the regular players are Jack Bier and Emelia Caruthers, two honors students who’ve turned their doubles partnership into more than a pastime; it's a ritual of focus, connection, and most importantly, fun.

Both Bier and Caruthers played tennis at the varsity level in high school. For them, intramural doubles have been a way to establish a familiar routine in an unfamiliar new environment: college. Between rallies (consecutive back and forth sequences) and match-points, both say tennis gives them valuable space to reset that classes can’t offer.

“Playing [tennis] is definitely a good break and great way to get your mind off school work. It’s a great thing,” Bier said.

Intramural sports at Iowa are open to all students, but for Bier and Caruthers, the stakes feel personal. Their doubles team, the Racketeers, were the top ranked team in the co-rec doubles tournament and recently defeated the team Black and White to secure their league champion status. 

The duo credits their success to their established connection before joining the league, living on the same floor in their residence hall, their tight friendship has allowed them to trust each other on the court. 

“You could say we’re winning with the power of friendship,” Caruthers said jokingly.

For these two, every match is more than a friendly competition, it’s a reminder that even the busiest students need space to play. 

While some students fill their free time through sport, Lilly Froehlich finds calm in a slower kind of craft, embroidery. In her dorm, a table scattered with colorful threads and fabric becomes her creative refuge from the constant motion of student life.

“I see the finished project in my head before I even start drawing it out.” Froelich said, recalling the first step in her creative process, a hallowed ritual born during her unconventional freshman year of high school. Froelich is a junior at UI, meaning her ninth grade experience was spoiled by the COVID shutdown. 

It was during the tooth-grinding, mind-numbing boredom of lockdown that Froelich decided to pick up a gifted embroidery kit. She was immediately smitten by the art form’s zen, quickly tearing through the entire pre-made kit selection at her local Hobby Lobby. 

“For someone like me, [embroidery] was actually really helpful in allowing me to focus. Something like embroidery is really good for people who can't sit still,” said Froelich. “I found that it has really helped my attention span.”

Studying to earn a B.A. in biology with a focus on Pre-Veterinary medicine and a minor in environmental science, Froelich acknowledges the dichotomous nature of her pursuits,

“My accomplishments in [STEM] are very different from my accomplishments in art. What I do in STEM is so quantitative—black and white—right answer, wrong answer. It's a different form of accomplishment than art. Any act of art is an accomplishment, if it's helping you, if it's something that you're proud of, it’s art.”

Froelich serves on the executive board of the Cross Stitch and Embroidery Club at UI, helping share the relaxing properties of embroidery and other art forms like it with the university’s student body. The club allows students to breathe deeply amidst the breakneck speeds of a whirling college life and learn valuable skills in expression through their craft.

What connects Bier, Caruthers, and Froehlich isn’t just their shared honors status, but their collective understanding that success is more than grades and credit hours. Each has discovered that the key to thriving in their college careers is to find ways to spend their time off.

The University of Iowa’s Honors community prides itself on cultivating curiosity across all fields of study. These students take that same curiosity into everything they do, whether it’s rallying on the tennis court or threading a needle. Their pursuits remind us that growth often happens in unexpected places, that education, at its best, doesn’t stop when class ends.