On a chilly, Spring semester weekend in 2023, Diego Coelho Rodrigues `25 swam for Grinnell in the Midwest Conference championship for the final time, with a personal-best performance. His mother flew in from Brazil to see him swim, surprising Rodrigues at the conference. The weekend was one of celebration — Grinnell won the Conference, and Rodrigues’s mother prepared Brazilian food for him and his Brazilian friends on campus.
After a minute or so of thought, Coelho Rodrigues, with his guitar beside him on a Clark Lounge couch, recounted this weekend as his fondest memory from Grinnell. He describes his time at Grinnell as built on three pillars — academic, music and swimming. This was no in particular order, although academics, he said while laughing, must come first.
“Swimming brought me to Grinnell,” Coelho Rodrigues said. He began swimming at 14, and the sport became his biggest priority in high school, participating in multiple state and national championships. At Grinnell, he credits former coach Erin Hurley for being a strong support during his first year. He swam for his first two years, spent his third year studying abroad, and he was forced to stop this year when internship work began to take up more of his time.
“The team is really like a family,” he said. “Being next to someone everyday, putting in your best, it definitely binds you together.”
Music, Coelho Rodrigues’ second pillar, has always been a part of his life. Both his parents are professional musicians, and his house functioned as a music school for some years. Coelho Rodrigues began playing the guitar at age seven. After a hesitant first year, he joined the Latin American Ensemble with the encouragement of Professor Gabriel Espinosa. The Ensemble presented a space for musical community and cultural synergy.
“It was an awesome experience because I could be playing music that was familiar and that I enjoyed with students from all over the world,” Coelho Rodrigues said.
In his second year, Coelho Rodrigues joined BĀDPHAYÁK, a student band. “After COVID, it took a while to grow the campus music scene,” Coelho Rodrigues said. “Badphayak was one of the few bands on campus.”
Over the years, BĀDPHAYÁK’s roster changed as students came and went, but the band remained a space where Coelho Rodrigues found joy in performance. Recording original music in the fall 2024 semester was a memorable highlight.
In December 2024, BĀDPHAYÁK performed their final show in the Grinnell College Museum of Art. Amongst the myriad of performances that BĀDPHAYÁK did — Gardners, house shows and dorm shows — Coelho Rodrigues describes this as his favorite.
“We were all facing each other,” he recalled. “We were playing for each other and not an audience. It was much more intimate.”
This semester, Coelho Rodrigues had the opportunity to perform at Disco Harris as a guitarist for the Disco Band for the first time.
“There were so many amazing musicians in the band that it was just really easy, and just a joy to play on that stage,” he said.
When Coelho Rodrigues arrived at Grinnell, there were eight Brazilian students on campus. The Brazilian Students Association (BRASA) at the time was essentially one small friend group. BRASA, from his first year to his fourth, has remained a consistent source of comfort.
“Its’ intimidating when you’re a first year and everything is so new,” he said. “But BRASA became a family away from home.”
Motivated to share Brazilian culture as much as he could, Coelho Rodrigues became BRASA’s co-president in his second year. He has participated in the Food Bazaar organised by the International Students Organisation every year that he has been on campus, where he made brigadeiros and escondidinhos.
“One of the best things about Grinnell is the diversity that we have,” he said.
Academics has been the final, and most important, pillar of Coelho Rodrigues’ Grinnell experience. An economics major with a Global Development Studies (GDS) concentration, Coelho Rodrigues spent his first years at Grinnell “exploring different areas of his brain.” Taking several English classes developed his passion for literature and taking a peace and conflict studies course with former Professor John Garrison allowed him to participate in course-embedded travel to Portugal. In the summer of his first year, Coelho Rodrigues completed a Mentored Advanced Project (MAP) with Professor Garrison, using classical texts to form an analysis on the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities.
For the entirety of his third year, Coelho Rodrigues studied abroad in the London School of Economics (LSE).
“It was a hard decision to make, to leave my friends, music, swimming for a whole year,” he said. “But it was totally worth it. The academic environment, and exploring a different continent really pushes you to be a better version. It was one of the best experiences of my life.”
At LSE, Coelho Rodrigues worked as the editor and as a writer for the Latin America section of the London Globalist, a student-run journal on international affairs, expanding his interest in and knowledge of geopolitics and climate policy.
After graduation, Coelho Rodrigues will be living and working in Chicago as a strategy consultant.
“I’ve not had the time to be sad about leaving Grinnell yet,” he said. “But I’m starting to get nostalgic.”
