08/20/2026
“It’s challenged me in ways I didn’t think I could challenge myself before. I’ve experienced things that I never would have thought I would experience in my four years at college.”
Connor Melehan is talking about Capacious Minds Fellows, an experimental year-long fellowship that asks students to expand their minds — and even their notion of what a mind is — through activities centered on embodiment, play, and wonder.
If it all sounds a bit mysterious — that’s the point. The fellows never knew exactly what they would be doing week by week.
One session focusing on movement exercises put them well outside their comfort zones.
“There were a couple shared glances between everybody in the group, like, ‘are we really doing this?’” Melehan jokes.
But he soon found that he gained a lot of “comfort with discomfort” as he said yes to new experiences, week after week.
Capacious Minds Fellows also helps students practice attunement — to others, to the world around them, and to themselves.
During his second semester in the program, Melehan realized he was rethinking his path at Duke.
“I spent the first three semesters at Duke trying to make myself look as good as possible for law school applications, when I had zero desire to be a lawyer,” he says. “You end up so busy that you don’t give yourself the time to actually think about why you’re pursuing something or if you even want to pursue it.”
One day, while studying for the LSAT in his dorm, Melehan suddenly thought, “Wait, why am I doing this?”
He closed the book, looked at the wall, and thought for an hour before he realized, “This isn’t what I want to do. I need to keep digging.”
While Capacious Minds Fellows didn’t give Melehan the answer to that question, it did give him the confidence to sit with uncertainty until he could figure it out on his own.
“Capacious Minds has qualitatively changed me,” he says. “It’s made me more comfortable with the unknown, and more excited to pursue areas that can propel my growth.”
Applications for Capacious Minds Fellows are now open! Apply by August 30 (link in bio).
Duke Office of Undergrad Ed Duke Division of Experiential Education Duke Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Duke Engineering
