High Point University

A final farewell from senior editor Lauren Fitch

Lauren Fitch//Organizations Editor

My time at High Point University has been a rollercoaster. I haven’t always liked it here (in fact, I’m guilty of complaining a lot more than most students), but something made me stay. Perhaps it was my daunting future at community college if I decided to leave, or perhaps it was the optimist in me who thought, “Well, it certainly has to get better.” It did get better, just not in the ways that I had anticipated.

I am perhaps one of the only students who didn’t know about the religious affiliation of the campus when I signed up to come here. I missed that memo on my tour because like always, I was a few minutes late. When I showed up for convocation, my mother and I were both crying. She, because her daughter was going to college, which had been a lifelong dream. I, because the speaker had prayed over the student body and, looking around frantically, I noticed that I was the only one who did not bow my head. I spent the next two years terrified that other students or faculty would find out my secret: that I didn’t believe in a god, but I wanted to, because I was afraid of what my peers would think. The day of Convocation, I got on my knees on the bridge outside of the Slane Student Center and begged for my parents to take me home. They didn’t.

I can’t say whether or not it would be better if they did. I spent the next two years devising a plan to get out of here, to escape to what I thought would be a better place, and who really knows if any other school would have been a better place.

But then something in my gut told me to give it one last try, and I decided to stay. I decided to make the best of my time at HPU. I got an internship at a financial firm doing compliance work and actually liked it, and the next semester I began my degree in English. It was in the English department that I found my home, and it was also, coincidentally, where I shared a class with one of my former tutoring students, who asked me to try to become an editor the summer before my senior year.

I had spent the entire summer working for a magazine, another surprising twist, because I had always pictured myself working in fiction, and fiction alone. I was one of those writers who thought I had a strict genre, but my work in my internship proved me wrong, and I found that I loved non-fiction as well. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will still never write good poetry. I applied for the job, and I was overjoyed when I got it.

This past year of working for Campus Chronicle as the Organizations Editor has allowed me to meet so many new people and find out about so many amazing clubs that I really wish I had been a part of. It’s allowed me to network and to open my mind to people who are different than myself. I started a blog about writing, I joined a sorority and I made new friends. I finally told my friends about my religious affiliation, and they (mostly) accepted me. I became a better, more open version of myself.

It’s not the university that has made my last year at HPU as great as it has been. It’s the people who also decided to be here at the exact same time. While there are definitely things that need to change at HPU, like the willingness to have open and free dialog about different religions or lackthereof, I wouldn’t change the people I’ve decided to call my friends. As graduation approaches, I’m excited to go, but there will definitely be people that I will miss.

And to the underclassmen: don’t be afraid to be who you are, because you might just be surprised.