Hello there! I’m Colette Murphy, or Coco as people familiar with myself call me, and I’m building this site using WordPress. I feel that you should get to know me better, I was born in 2004 and my graduation year is 2026. I love anime, writing, fashion, and robotics competitions! Throughout my four years of high school at Hopewell Valley Central Highschool I was on their FIRST robotics team SPIKE293. I have had Type One Diabetes since I was three years old and have gone to a Diabetic camp for almost 13 years at Camp Nejeda in Stillwater, New Jersey! I’ve been a counselor there for three years now and though I’ll probably never go back since I’m in Maine now, it’ll always remain as a second home in my heart. I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and moved to Franklin, Massachusetts for two years in fourth and fifth grade. My upbringing was pretty rough because of my single mother and Type One Diabetes, but it made me who I am today. We were eventually forced to move back to Hopewell/Princeton, New Jersey, in sixth grade and now I’m up in Biddeford, Maine. I have a younger brother whom I’m extremely close with and four new step siblings as of August 2022 since my dad got remarried as well!

I originally came to UNE because of their amazing Biology-Science program in hopes of becoming an agricultural toxicologist. I even worked at a Watershed for a year and a half teaching about biodiversity and learning about the famous environmental toxicologist Rachel Carson. During my time there, so many different scientists would stop by to teach me even more about the field I’d fallen in love with. Even people involved with the Society of Toxicology would talk to me right in my home state of New Jersey. But I found that despite my love for the field, toxicology wasn’t for me. After several heated discussions over whether or not experimenting on animals to enhance human progression was moral, I felt that it was not worth it to put an animal in harm’s way. I ended up finding my calling in writing; growing up I wrote two books in the span of five years in notebooks I’d been gifted. I write almost every day and love poetry.

Despite the major I want to pursue I didn’t actually come to Maine for UNE originally. My older brother actually had a cheesesteak shop right in Portland called Rebel Cheesesteak, and growing up we had a house in Norway, Maine that my family and I lived in over the Summer. The house was a fundamental part of my upbringing, and really made me fall in love with Maine as a whole.

This all leads me to what I really want to accomplish when I pursue writing as a major while attending UNE. When I grow up, I want to become a writer so that I can comment about how Child Protective Services needs more funding in order to continue protecting children in a safer way. I’ve had multiple run-ins with these services throughout my life and they failed me growing up. I don’t want any more children to go through what I went through when it comes to this, and I want change. I want to be involved with change and I want to be involved with what it’ll bring to the kids of the future and the generations to come through my writing.

Above is a picture of my younger brother to the left and me on our older brother’s shoulders as a child at a playground in California visiting my aunt and uncle.

Above is a picture of my 293 SPIKE robotics team and I at a FIRST Robotics “Ramp Riot” in 2021.

Above is a picture of my best friends from New Jersey and I at graduation taking a photo together in 2022.

Above is a picture of my Type One Diabetic friends and I at the beginning of Summer 2022 on the last day of our staff training week at Dairy Queen.

Above is a picture of my older brother, my dad, and I at his wedding during August 2022.

Above is a picture of my roommate and I kayaking on the water at UNE in 2022.

Above is my dad taking a picture of me in Harpswell, Maine after we went out for ice cream in Summer 2023.