What Emory means to me...

As a rising senior, faced with the looming threat of “the real world”, I am increasingly reflecting on my years spent at Emory. I had been very close to attending a different college when I learned I was accepted at Emory. I sometimes wonder how different I would be had I not chosen to come here. Perhaps I would have been happy wherever I went to college, but I can’t imagine my undergrad experience anywhere but Emory.
Last semester, after taking a course titled Religion and Ecology, I became involved with an initiative called Emory as Place. Interested in promoting Emory’s history, culture, and values, Emory as Place hosted Placefest and led walks around the green spaces on campus. “How cool is that?” I thought. I’ve always been interested in history, especially of places I consider home. And Emory as Place also had a focus on living sustainably, an idea that had recently sparked my interest while taking an Environmental Studies course.
In short, Emory as Place hired me for their summer internship position. My internship has led me to think about Emory. A lot. In past summers I have sat at home, studied abroad, or worked, but I’ve never been on campus. Now every morning I walk through the quad thinking, either of random lists to do, or how hot Atlanta is in the summer, or I become less self-absorbed and think about how many times a day the many people who interact with Emory, including myself, become caught up in our daily issues, forgetting the context in which we live.
I have moved beyond seeing the campus as a first year student: no-name buildings on random streets, and I see places full of memories. Under that tree was where my hall mate (later my best friend) and I spent an afternoon enjoying the mild autumn weather and discussing everything from classes to guys to futile divining of our life purposes. Every time there’s an event on Asbury circle, with people around outside and music playing, I think, this is it! This is college. These are the moments we remember years later, the creativity and intelligence of our students and the sheer fun it is to be around 6,000 or so of our peers. When will we be around this many people of our age, roughly on the same life path, at the same time? It’s a special environment to appreciate.
I, as most upperclassmen, could share our Emory memories for hours. Yet this summer I am studying the history of Emory before my class came along. In preparing for this internship I read several books about the history of Emory and in my Religion and Ecology course I learned about Emory’s environment, watershed, and the environmental struggles facing the Atlanta community as a whole. It’s eye opening to think of the many classes of students who have come to Emory, students who studied during and after fighting in the Civil War, World Wars, and wars since. At first only male students were admitted, then females were allowed, then Emory ended racial restrictions, and now we have students from countries all over the world traveling to a school that started in humble beginnings as the Georgia Conference Manual Labor School in 1835. We’ve come a long way.
As I continue developing my own memories of Emory during my senior year, I hope to keep reading about the people who first made Emory a place to further enrich my views of this place, my home for four years, and, now, forever a piece of myself.

--kate...is the intern for Emory as Place, a senior in Emory University, and prospective green businesswoman.