Meet fourth year Rhodes scholar Russell Bogue

How exactly do you go about telling your parents that you are the recipient of a Rhodes scholarship? “Hey mom, guess what? I got that scholarship I applied for!” doesn’t really seem to cut it.

However, this is the news that fourth year Russell Bogue got to enthusiastically share with his family. To say this is a huge deal would be an understatement. The application process for the Rhode’s Scholarship is quite rigorous.

Russell explained that after his application had been chosen from his district he was invited to New York for an interview.

“There are sixteen regions in the U.S.” explains Russell, “and I was district two, which consisted of Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.”

Russell was interviewed in New York along with thirteen or fourteen other finalists, and all interviews took place the same day all over the country.

“The night before the interviews there was a cocktail party at the home of one of the interviewers during which the candidates of the scholarship were able to talk to each other and sort of check out the competition. The stakes were pretty high and so was the pressure, and all that the night before the interview!”

The next morning, Russell was interviewed in front of a panel of eight former scholars. He only had to wait until that afternoon for the panel to announce who had the recipients were.

“It’s kind of like American Idol actually,” Russell joked.

The question of which is more nerve racking – American Idol or the Rhodes scholarship – is debatable. However, when looking at Russell’s experiences at UVA it becomes very clear as to why he is worthy recipient of the scholarship.

Involved with numerous organizations on grounds, Russell poured a large chunk of time into co-founding ‘Seriatim’, an academic journal concerned with American politics and political theory.

“I spent a fair amount of my time getting that developed and off the ground,” Russell explained.

“The journal and being a vice chair for the Honor Committee, which I loved, took up a lot of my time. I’ve been involved with Honor since my first semester and it has been one of the most important and worthwhile things I’ve done at UVA.”

Russell also has found a passion for Chinese history and culture – something he discovered during his time at UVA.

“I studied French in High School and came to UVA looking to earn a new non-romance language. I wanted a challenge, so in my opinion my choices narrowed down to Arabic, Russian, and Chinese. I picked Chinese because it seemed relatively relevant and I thought the characters were pretty cool. So I went for it.”

In case you don’t think learning Chinese is cool enough, Russell told me about one of his favorite classes:

“The class was called ‘Books Behind Bars’ and every week my classmates and I would drive up to the juvenile correctional centers in Virginia and we facilitated discussions on Russian literature with the inmates. It was very fun and I actually enjoyed it a lot.”

So how does Russell find the time to do it all?

“I like to keep busy,” Russell explains. “I was busy in high school and I don’t actually know any other way than getting involved in things that interest me and doing things that I find meaningful and having people around me. There are so many things to do at UVA that I found it hard to tell myself ‘no’ and I just end up doing so much.”

Thankfully for Russell his fraternity brothers know how to keep him on his toes and make sure he is not only taken up by his studies. The weekend Winter Storm Jonas hit, Russell’s frat brothers pulled a prank on him that he surely won’t forget.

“They piled an inordinate amount of snow outside of my room around 4am in the morning.

“Someone had to shovel out the top of the mound and then I stood on a chair and supported myself on my door frame in order to get out.”

But no hard feelings – Russell used his unfortunate situation to his advantage and asked his brothers to come over later that day during which they spent several hours building an ice bar outside of his room.