"To do private label clothes you have to be an utterly ruthless producer and I wasn't good at the ruthless part," she jokes.

Returning to Campus

But she is good in her role as senior tutor, where ruthlessness is not required--at least for the most part.

The decision to make the leap from teaching, which she focused on for two years at the College, to that of administrating happened in part because she thought she could be an example of someone who had gone into an "eccentric" career, she says.

"My life has been dedicated to the proposition that you never quite know what you have to do and when you have to do it," she says. "One of the things I don't think people think of enough is having a good time in their intellectual work. If [a student is] just slogging through their ec classes, I think they should do something else."

As an instructor in literature, Bruzelius says she also enjoys the ability to bridge academics with her work in the House. In particular, when she talks to students in the House, Bruzelius says she is fascinated by the dramatic narratives she hears--the "metaphors of battle" that she hears as students discuss their academic problems.

It is the admiration for her senior tutor in Currier from the 1970s that also motivates Bruzelius.

She says she had always been impressed by her senior tutor--a unmarried woman by the name of Phoebe--who she saw as a model of competence, eccentricity and independence.

Now, three years into the position, Bruzelius says she hope she, too, can affect the lives of some of her students.

"Sometimes you give people a different language with which to think through what they're doing," she says.

For Dingman, who now oversees the House system, Bruzelius' message to students is encouraging.

"In student minds, it makes it feel more allowable to follow your passions. I think that's a wonderful message for our undergraduates," he says.