By Nathalie MoskalWhen Erika Templeton was 4 years old, she found her pet rabbit motionless in its cage. She ran to her mother in a panic and told her that the rabbit’s nose was not moving.
“I was gearing up to give her the speech about death as I took the rabbit outside to bury it,” said Templeton’s mother, Beth Scheuerlein. “But before I could finish Erika looked at the thing and said, ‘Yep, that sure is one dead rabbit.’”
Templeton, 20, has been blunt and observant since a young age. Sitting in a classroom at Boston University’s College of Communication, her brown hair is tied back simply, but her striped shirt, bracelets and orange cell phone are as vibrant as her excitement in talking about her learning experience at one of her past jobs.
“I worked at an advertising agency for a few years and I just realized that working a nine to five in an office every day would kill me by the time I turned 30,” she says.
She is interested in music, which she writes and records; travel, which she excitedly talks about doing one day; and lamps, for which she says she has a small fetish.
Templeton has lived in several places since birth, but she credits her high school years in Hopewell, N.J., with making her who she is today.
When it came time to choose a college, Templeton says she ”totally blew off the selection process.” But after ending up at Boston University, she found her niche in the journalism department, choosing to focus on magazine journalism.
“I love to write and I kind of figured that being a journalist would give me that opportunity to have a job outside the office and outside of the everyday business hours,” Templeton says.
Ideally, Templeton says she would like to work for a music publication, or a world travel publication like National Geographic.
“I like sort of hipster magazines,” Templeton says, “but I’m not a hipster.”
Templeton is a senior at Boston University who spends her time outside of school “just hanging out,” and works filing paperwork for the lawsuits of an elderly woman in South Boston.
“She’s kind of crazy, she can’t walk and she can’t use her left elbow,” Templeton says. “She’s a little sue-happy and needs help organizing all her files or sometimes I just go over there to talk to her,” she said. “It’s kind of like philanthropy ... but for $15 an hour.”
Her mother describes her as a leader and someone who “thinks outside of the box”, while her roommate, Myssa Meyouchy says she is “energetic, funky and literate.”
Ever bluntly, Templeton says, “I consider myself a pretty mediocre, average person.”