When Anna Mayer ‘10 was asked in her college application to convey something personal about herself, she rejected the standard five-paragraph essay format out of hand. Instead, she responded by fusing her two loves—photography and creative writing—in a poetic collage. Mayer says she struggled to express her quixotic personality at her neat-and-tidy public high school in suburban Detroit. “I tried to wear fairy wings,” she remembers. “They thought it was a drug symbol. I had to take them off—suspension was threatened. I haven’t worn them at Reed yet. The urge kind of passed in junior year.”