As I sat down to write this, my final column for the Observer, I couldn’t help but think back to when I first started out, both with the newspaper and at Augustana.
I don’t think the me that I was four years ago could have ever predicted the wild ride ahead.
I’ve gone from columnist, to assistant opinions editor my first year, to the opinions editor for sophomore and junior years, and back to a columnist my senior year. It seems fitting to have come full circle back to the position I started in with the Observer. I’d like to thank Ryan and Shylee for being the best editors in chief a ranting radical like me could have ever asked for. Thanks for the good times the year I made it out to ICPA and for all the times I made the quote garden.
Thanks for all the Tuesday nights in the office, many of which were longer (and more fun) than they had any right to be. But most importantly, thanks for all the times you understood and supported me. We’ve made it.
I’d also like to thank Jared Schroeder, Stephanie DePascale-Soebbing, and Carolyn Yaschur for all their guidance, and all their challenges that made me grow as a writer and an editor.
During my time here at Augustana, I was lucky enough to have done some other pretty incredible things, and work with and befriend many incredible people.
Thank you to the ladies and gentlefolk of Sigma Kappa Tau, for inviting me into a sisterhood that’s changed how I think about Greek life for the better. I’m glad I can go out into the world and say that I am uniquely KT!
I’d also like to thank Karen Peterson and Rebecca Marion-Fleisch in CORE, and Bonita and Nelson Bock of Wartburg West for facilitating my amazing Denver experience earlier this year. A very special shoutout also goes to all the Denver ladies from this year – Allie, Alyssa, Emily, Paige and Sara. I would not have survived without you five and our Sliceworks adventures and 2nd floor shenanigans.
To the people who participated in the Black Lives Matter activist movements this year and last, it has been an honor and truly my privilege to be able to know each and every one of you. I can only hope that I can carry with me some of the grace, wisdom and power that I learned working with all of you for justice. I will always be down for the cause.
Most importantly, I would like to thank Araceli Masterson and Mecca Joseph. Both of you shaped my life and my time here at Augustana in immeasurable, innumerable ways. I am a better person for knowing you both.
Araceli, thank you for being my mentor and for making me a better scholar and feminist. Mecca, thank you for being my roomie and my best friend. I know you hate it when I get sappy, but it’s my column and I’ll cry if I want to.
Last but not least, thank you to all of the other professors who have guided me and built me up, to the readers whose feedback made writing these columns worthwhile and to all the friends I have made on this campus along the way.
I leave Augustana with a fuller heart and a richer mind for all the contributions you all have made to my life. It’s been a wild four years. Godspeed, mooncats.