I’ve never met Nell before. When we meet at the Grillé, she is pulling a single yellow Post-It and a pen out of her coat pocket. “I just keep remembering things I have to do,” she explains. The Post-It is nearly covered in writing. I like her already.
 

Now, I understand that you’re a small-town girl.

It’s true.
 

Is this a big part of your identity?

I guess you could say it makes a nice shocker. It’s a conversation starter.
 

What’s the name of the town?

Prairie Farm, Wisconsin.
 

How many people live there?

Um, 508.
 

So you came to the Twin Cities...

Yeah, a lot of my family lives here. My parents both went to Macalester and got married in the Chapel.
 

You’re pretty close to your family, right? I mean, the small-town stereotype is that families are pretty tight. Do you go home often?

I don’t go home a lot, but since my extended family lives here it’s easy to see my family. We’re all close. We hang out.
 

You’re a psych major and a dance minor...what was your directed research?

Hmm, let me try to remember. It was so long ago…oh yeah, I was researching the therapeutic effects of dance. So I had a survey, and I gave it to students in dance classes and students that led music classes.
 

Dance is sort of a passion for you, isn’t it? Did you come to Macalester knowing that you were going to participate in dance?

Yeah, I was on the dance line in high school, so I came and took dance classes my first semester, and I was in The Unicorn, Gorgon and The Manticore my sophomore year. So I always knew I wanted to take classes, and then I started doing the performance thing later.
 

What does dancing mean to you?

It kind of just jumps inside my bones, and it can’t get out, I don’t know. I love to dance—it’s when I feel the best, when I’m dancing. I really, really love it. I wasn’t really trained when I was younger, so I don’t really have a style. I’ve got rhythm, so I like anything that’s fun…mostly there’s a certain kind of feeling I get when I dance. It’s kind of modern-y now, though, because you can’t get away from that when you study dance—it sort of becomes modern.
 

They don’t have postmodern dancing at Macalester, do they?

I suppose there is postmodern dance, but we don’t really use that word in the dance department. It’s a shame; don’t tell anybody.
 

You’re in the Campus Center a lot—do you work here?

I do work here—I’m the building manager.
 

What do you do? Do you have a walkie-talkie?

I have a walkie-talkie; that’s the most important thing. I basically just have to patrol the area, make sure everything’s okey-dokey.

You’re not in charge of busting people that sneak into the cafeteria, are you?

No, we leave that up to Café Mac. I mean, we’re basically in control of keeping everything running smoothly, and then we have to count the money at the end of the day.
 

What’s your dream job?

My dream job would be something that would allow me to be organized, and to be in charge of organizing a group of people toward a goal—I like that, that’s fun—and then it would also let me teach dance, I guess.
 

So, let’s get back to dance. How long have you been choreographing?

I choreographed last semester for the “Works in Progress.” It was kind of more of an informal project—we performed in the theatre but it was very informal, and then we performed at the Walker Sculpture Garden. And I choreographed many of our dance line routines in high school. I’m also choreographing a really cool piece for the Fall Show. I’m choreographing a piece to a Dinah Washington song that’s been remixed, so it’s really kind of funky and it’s sexy but not, like, just to be sexy. It’s cool.
 

Were you a cheerleader in high school?

No! People like to confuse dance line and cheerleading, and it’s bad but I still get caught up in the debate. Dance line is not cheerleading—they’re very different.
 

How is it different?

Okay, cheerleading probably has more of a purpose than dance line, but I think dance line’s cooler. Cheerleading is leading the crowd at a sporting event in various cheers throughout the game; dance line is half-time entertainment. Well, real dance line is a separate thing that you go to competitions for, but my school didn’t have that, so we were just half-time entertainment.
 

So back to the topic of jobs: if you can’t get this magical dream job, what do you think is probably going to happen?

I think that what’s probably going to happen is I’m going to search really hard for a job and in the meantime I’ll stay working at Coat of Many Colors, maybe.
 

You must get a lot of interesting customers in there. Do you feel like Soulflower gets more of the Macalester crowd?

You know, I bet they do because Coat of Many Colors doesn’t really have a whole lot of—I mean, our jewelry is cool, but the clothes are not so cool for younger people. The younger crowd stays in the front half of the store, with the accessories and the tapestries.
 

Okay, so tell me a good retail story, a horror story. Although I feel like at Coat of Many Colors, you probably get a lot of nice, calm people coming in.

Well, Coat of Many Colors is pretty calm and nice. There’s one woman who comes in all the time, and she has this really funny Minnesota accent and she’s always like, “Oh, this is real cute, oh yah, real cute,” and she just walks around the store and tells her friend about how everything’s real cute. So that’s fun. But I guess a horror story is that I used to work at Wal-Mart.
 

Back home?

Yeah, in high school. I had to wear the pink smock, I was in the cosmetics department. It was beautiful. They didn’t let me keep it.
 

Do you think you could ever work for Wal-Mart again?

No, I don’t think so. It was kind of an excuse to get out of my town, because there definitely is not a Wal-Mart in my town. So, I got to go out and meet some other people. It was quite interesting. We had fun.
 

Now, you’ve got the Wal-Mart crowd and the Coat of Many Colors crowd…

Yeah, they don’t mix. Well, I guess I don’t really talk to the Wal-Mart crowd anymore, but they wouldn’t mix.
 

Dunn Bros. or Coffee News?

Well, I don’t drink coffee.
 

Do you drink tea?

I do drink tea. I also like water and milk—separately, not together.
 

Whole milk?

I’m a standard two-percent girl. My first year I had two glasses of two-percent at every meal. I really like milk.
 

What are you going to do if you ever become lactose intolerant?

I don’t know, my boyfriend is lactose intolerant…and, well, it’s all right, but I don’t like lactose-intolerant-person milk. It’s not as good. It has kind of like a weird, sweet taste to it.
 

Should we end it on milk?

Sure.