Cory Stutz spoke with The Commuter about his path from a childhood of online school to the big jump of in person classes at LBCC. Also, how music has shaped his life.
Everybody was like, I’d never heard “House of the Rising Sun” like that before. That’s the whole point.
I want to branch out and see what I can do outside of the scope of just normal ukulele playing.
My mom was telling me, “you should just do “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” Everybody likes that.” I’m like, yeah, exactly. And everybody’s heard that, but they haven’t heard this. So that’s what I go for. I just want to step outside the box. I did Metallica once too.
I was adopted when I was 3 and my parents were born in ‘59 and ‘61. So I grew up with oldies music.
When coming from the foster system, I started singing almost as soon as I could and my mom was telling me, you were always singing as a kid.
I’m from Halsey, Oregon. We have 959 people in our town. We have three churches and they’re all Methodist and they’re all old people. So when I was young, that wasn’t exactly a big draw. I did all the fun events and then when it comes to the church stuff, I’m like, ah, nah, pass. Where’s the snacks? Where’s the games?
The first time I really sang was with our worship team. That was where music started for me.
They were a huge inspiration. Without Chi Alpha, I probably wouldn’t have been on that stage.
That’s when I started realizing oh, worship doesn’t have to be this whole big corporate thing with like a drum set and stuff. (I saw) our campus pastor here and he was playing the Cajon. I wanted to try that.
I was online school all the way through high school and middle school and my last year of elementary school. So I have adhd, but my brother is on the autism spectrum and they wanted to put him in a boys farm instead of handling that. So that was our special ed program and it wasn’t that great, but it caused me to be put into online school, which I didn’t love because it created a lot of social anxiety. Which is why I think doing that talent show was such a big step for me because it was like six, seven years that (I) completely have no, like social (interaction). Like there’s a couple field trips, but then once Covid hit, then everything was gone.
The people that moved to online, it was really difficult for them. Just all the little bit that was in-person was then gone. It led to a lot of social anxiety. So that’s how I was feeling when I walked around campus that day.
And then they made me feel a little bit welcomed. And it was really just a cool experience to just get comfortable and explore my faith again, which I had really taken this huge step back from.
I mean, Albany’s not that big, but it felt like New York when I got here.
I’m like, man, I’m going to in person college. Holy cow.
I get there, there’s like all these balloons, all these people, and I’m like, I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.
Now I know this is like one of the smallest campuses around, but I mean, it felt like one of the biggest universities ever when I got there.
That’s why I think Welcome Day is so crucial to freshmen and why I put importance on that. Because it’s like people that have been in the same situation I’ve been, where it’s like, Whoa, this is so much.
All the clubs here are really welcoming, and I really wish that more students would get involved at that point because it doesn’t always seem like LBCC has the community that it could.
People just need to know, like, hey, we’re here. This is a great opportunity to get away from your classes, from the stresses of your classes or jobs or whatever. There are opportunities to actually grow and have friendships. There’s clubs that meet every week
And obviously I’m biased. Like, I want people to join our club. But there’s so many amazing clubs here and I think that’s something that does not get talked about enough. I hear freshmen and they’re like, like, oh, yeah, I’ve been looking for a club and I’m like, you’re standing next to a poster, with a whole bunch of clubs on it. It’s like, take your pick, you know?
My current plan is to get my associate in communications or whatever the pathway is here, transfer to Oregon State, and then the Chi Alpha over there has an internship and that’s kind of the next step. Like the dream career for me would be campus ministry right now.
The cool thing is as a student and a volunteer, I get the chance to be involved in that now. That full devotion kind of thing. You’re just giving yourself completely and totally to this and you can’t just like, go halfway. So I’m really excited to jump into that.
So communications is my area of study and more specifically public speaking, just because that’s going to help me with talking about God more comfortably and just in general helping me beat that anxiety.
If you told little 2020 Cory that his major would be communications. He would have laughed. Right, sure.
if there’s anything that I can learn from this experience from performing at the talent show, it’s to get involved in these events. These are awesome ways to grow and get to know different people. Just with one rehearsal I got to meet so many different people and performers and audience members.
Something that really helped me break that nervousness is getting out and going to that first rehearsal, because then I was able to get in front of the microphone, get in front of everybody, and just sing.
It felt so comfortable, and it felt really like, oh, I can do this. Like, this is actually kind of fun. It replaced all that nervousness with, like, I’m excited for this now.
It was just getting out there and jamming, rather (than) with just a few people, jamming with quite a few people.
I didn’t open my eyes the entire time, so I couldn’t psych myself out.
I just want to shout out for our club, the Chi Alpha. Come get some coffee.
As a club, we’re just trying to grow. We’re just trying to get everybody to know that we’re here.
We have our campus ministry. And I usually play worship songs with them. I think we’ve been here for five years. That’s our worship in the courtyard.
I also always bring my cajon with me for anybody who doesn’t have an instrument and just wants to sit and drum along.
I love getting a chance to see people walk by and they’ll be like, what’s this? Well, we have free coffee, so that’s a good start. You can’t go wrong with free coffee.
What we want to be is a place for anybody who’s curious about Christianity or are Christians themselves to gather and grow.
One thing that I really feel is such a strength and unique about Chi Alpha is that everyone is welcome. We’ve had atheists, we’ve had Buddhists. We’ve had all kinds of different religions. It’s open and free to talk about anything.
Every first Wednesday of the month, we have worship in the courtyard. And every Wednesday from 11 to 2, we have free coffee and conversation in the courtyard, too. At OSU, it meets at Linus Pauling Science Center (at) 6:30.
