Lola Mahoney

Lola Mahoney is a junior majoring in environmental studies and EBIO – ecology and evolutionary biology, at the University of Colorado Boulder. During her time in college, Lola has learned the importance of challenging herself as both a student and friend, recognizing that each aspect enhances her contribution to the campus community and experience at CU.

Read more of Lola’s story: 

What is your favorite memory from your time at CU Boulder, so far?

I have a lot of really amazing memories, but just last night, I was hanging out with all my roommates. We all live in a house together—it’s me and five other girls. We have a grill that we got second-hand, and we just grilled up burgers and hot dogs and hung around our porch, and it was just a really fun time. 

I feel like most of those small little moments when it’s really nice out, and 70 degrees, and it’s a Sunday, and I can just hang out with everyone—those tend to be the best little moments of my school experience.

What is something you would like to accomplish before your graduation?

So I’m a junior, and I recently was talking to a few professors that were guiding me into thinking about doing an honors thesis for my senior year. At first this seemed very unrealistic for just how I’ve seen myself as a student, and academically I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle something like that. But talking with my advisors and a few of my professors, they’ve really pushed me to start looking into it. 

So, I’m looking to write an honors thesis in environmental studies. I’m in the process of meeting some mentors that might lead me through the summer with some research. Then, going into my senior year, [the honors thesis] is two semesters at least, so I’m really excited for that. I’m looking into doing something towards sustainable agriculture and food insecurity globally. I like to work a lot with climate change and sustainability. It’s what I hope to do after college, so it’s really amazing to know that I have all these professors and even students. In discussing with them, I have a lot of support in this area, so I actually think I can do it, and I’m going to do it really well. So that’s probably the biggest accomplishment that I’m aiming for before I graduate.

What life lesson have your experiences here taught you that will be valuable beyond CU?

Especially at CU, just a college experience that I’ve learned is learning about everyone’s frame of reference and how everyone comes from a different background. Even if you think you’re similar to someone, the way you grew up can completely change the traits and things that you find important. 

I kind of learned that aggressively at first in college, when you first go into having a brand new roommate that you’ve never met before and having classes that you’ve never taken, and meeting how different professors like to do things differently. At first, it was kind of a hard adjustment for me, but now I realize that so many people do things because it’s just the traits that they hold dear. It’s rarely a personal attack or something that they're trying to offend you about. 

So just realizing that everyone comes from somewhere different and their values are different— that can be a really amazing thing and you can learn a lot from. I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned from college and that I’m going to take away for the rest of my life. 

What one word describes your role or a quality you bring to our campus community?

As much as I’d love [the one word] to be academic or something great and amazing, I think really at the end of the day my college experience has related to the friendships I’ve made—meeting new people, always trying to go about my day being friendly even when that’s difficult. 

The friendships I’ve made in college—I feel like sometimes, I especially came from a high school where friendship wasn’t always the priority. Now that I know what true friendship means and it is prioritized, I really feel like I want to fill that role every day—to be someone's friend, to be a friendly face, to say ‘hi’ to strangers. Yeah, I just want to be a friend. 

Do you feel like this word encompasses all your contributions, or is there more to share?

I think campus has pushed me to be the best friend and friendly person I can be. But I’d also say that I’ve never prioritized academics more in my life because I feel like the passion around environmental science and sustainability and climate change with my peers has really pushed me to care so much about my academic future. 

So, I would say Boulder has really pushed a lot of really important values on me that I never considered as important as I do now. Even surrounding myself with the friends that I’ve made, and all of my amazing roommates and classmates and seeing what they also value, and realizing that I really can just go to a club meeting with one of my friends because I just want to see how it was, or go to a career panel and talk to my professors about the steps that they’ve taken to get to where they are, or go on a hike with a random group of people who were just so inclusive. So, although ‘friend’ is a very important word to me, I think that I’ve been able to be a lot of people here, I’ve been able to wear a lot of hats, and it’s been really amazing.