Katy Stokes' life changed and progressed during her first few weeks at MSU like most freshmen's lives do.

Stokes started out dual-majoring in journalism and music performance, but felt the two areas were complete opposites. She decided against taking the route she had walked every day in high school, and chose to follow fate and new challenge - music.

And look at her now. Fate has challenged plans even more.

The 21-year-old Midland native chose to switch to music performance, even though she never thought she would become an opera singer.

But Stokes now is focusing all of her spare energy and extra time toward perfecting her role as Mimi, one of the lead characters in the Giacomo Puccini classic, "La Bohème."

"Katy has a naturally beautiful voice and knows how to use it intelligently," said Patricia Green, assistant professor of voice and Stokes' personal voice coach at MSU. "Her singing is full of color and passion, and she has an excellent ability to sing in many styles."

Stokes will showcase her operatic gifts this weekend in "La Bohème," a dramatic tale of love and loss, at the Fairchild Theatre.

But upon meeting Stokes, one wouldn't think of her as an opera singer.

The often witty, always smiling senior is so full of character and emotional enigma that she could almost come off as a motivational speaker, instead of someone who sings dramatic tales in Italian.

Bounding into a coffee shop with a huge grin on her face, she sets the mood and immediately expresses her excitement. In between questions, Stokes puts on a zany voice and gives off the sense that she is as down-to-earth as the next person. But mostly, Stokes shows she has the personality to be anything she wants to be, opera singer or not.

"All you need is the drive," Stokes explains. "You need to ache for it.

"If that feeling goes away, then it goes away. You always need to be in constant communication with yourself so you know what you're doing."

And it is here when Stokes' inner character comes into full view.

"In the arts, you feel very alone," she said. "We joke about what we're going to do after we get out, but I will be successful.

"I want to do what I'm doing."

Stokes' family has helped push her from pen and paper to opera.

But unlike some parents who force their children to do activities they're not interested in, her mother, Peg Stokes, and father, Bill Stokes, simply led a good example for Stokes to follow early in life.

"My parents both did something very amazing, in that, (when I was) in junior high, they both changed careers," Stokes said. "Now, my family is very happy, and this taught me that you do what makes you happy."

This is why Stokes sticks to her rigid regime and life behind the makeup, because she enjoys the work and deeply believes in herself.

"If you're putting in everything and you're not happy, there's nothing that says you can't change," she said.

Although Stokes came to college with a limited knowledge of opera - she loved to sing, but wasn't aware her voice could be capable of the high standards opera singers have to face - she had a musical background that stretched far and wide since preschool.

"She was vocal very early, and she was real creative and very artistic," said Peg Stokes, Katy's mother. "She started with a violin in fourth grade and played that up until seventh grade."

But it wasn't until Stokes' junior year of high school when she really began to stretch her vocal chords and experience her true talents.

During the annual solo and ensemble competitions, Stokes swept both the local and regional contests with straight ones - the highest rank possible.

"Katy developed very early," Peg Stokes said. "At the age of 18, she was hitting notes that her vocal coach wasn't hitting until she was 25."

With her extent of vocal abilities not only impressing her parents but everyone else in the music world, Stokes was told which way she should take her voice.

"When someone sings, you can see what their voice is equipped to do," Stokes said. "I have a very large and loud voice."

And this is why she started singing opera - because her vocals were perfect for it, her coach informed her.

"I started to sing opera before I loved opera," Stokes said. "That's just what I'm supposed to sing."