The dorm room door opens to a small replica of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings that ominously forewarns, “You shall not pass!” Darth Vader looks on from a corner.

“People look at me and think I’m a scary dude,” said Hazard, Ky., sophomore Jacob Turner.

Long black locks drape his shoulders, and size 13 shoes adorn his feet. He chose the hairstyle in emulation of the Lord of the Rings character Aragorn, and it requires washing twice a day.

Twice daily showers are a luxury he gained just four years ago when Hazard acquired a city water system.

“We used to collect rainwater in whiskey bottles and boil it before bathing,” Turner said of his childhood home amidst the eastern Kentucky strip mines.

His initial major, chemical engineering, was spurred by the realities of living in the coal mining culture and by two summers spent building houses with Habitat for Humanity.

“The explosions make things fall off the shelves,” he said. “One of these days, my house is just going to fall into the crack it’s resting on.”

Relinquishing the desire to be a chemical engineer, an ambition spawned by the movie “Flubber,” Turner took a civil engineering internship last summer.

“I was basically number chugging,” he said. “That is before I knew that math would rock my life.”

Turner, an expert of puzzles, can solve the Rubik’s cube in less than a minute.

A self-proclaimed nerd, he switched his major to math and claimed minors in philosophy and computer science, despite owning a computer for the first time in his life just this year.

With four full-ride scholarship options, Turner chose to travel the four-hour distance to Western and rarely visits home.

“I love my family,” he said. “The problem is that they’re in eastern Kentucky.”

Out of 300 students in his high school class, only 100 graduated, and about 50 went to college. He credits his family for motivating him but has no plans to return to his roots after graduation.

“I want to leave the state, travel all over the world . never really settle,” he said.

With plans to go to Germany, Turner will leave the country for the first time this summer.

By the time he applies to graduate schools, he must be a proficient reader of German in order to transcribe math journals.

Bookshelves and archaic publications engulf the walls of his Hazard home.

Growing up, education was instilled by his mother, an MD, and father, who has a double master’s degree, one in library science.

In 4th grade, his parents made him play an instrument. He chose the saxophone, which was a catalyst to new instruments including the oboe, piano and recorder.

“Music is my hobby,” he said. “I love it, but I feel like if I made it my job, I would lose passion for it.”

Behind the music notes, equations and long hair is a philosopher trying to figure out how to live his life by dabbling in seemingly contradictory interests.

“They keep me thinking and provide unintentional insight,” he said. “It’s all about adventure.”