“I’ve Seen Why The Caged Bird Sings”

As the Stakes Rise 

by Isabella Romine, 2026

Confronting resistance is frustrating, but it is how truth and power reveal themselves.

My experience as a Wake Forest student actually began in 2021 in Moldova, a small landlocked Eastern European country nestled between Ukraine and Romania. What would have been my first year of college, just down the road from my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, instead became an experience that laid the foundation for my next four years at Wake Forest. It changed how I understood the stakes of learning in a world shaped by power and conflict.

In 2020, as I was applying to colleges in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I also sent out an application for a very different opportunity: the year-long State Department National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) scholarship program, which places students in foreign countries to learn languages critical for diplomacy.

When I was named a Reynolds Scholar at Wake Forest and, simultaneously, a finalist for NSLI-Y’s Russian language program, I thought I would have to choose between two futures. Wake Forest proved otherwise—offering me the chance to defer, and to begin the next phase of my education in a country I could barely locate on a map.

Moldova was not comfortable. I arrived speaking little Russian, struggled to make connections during the ongoing pandemic, and watched the best-plans go awry as mounting geopolitical tensions culminated in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That year, however, proved to be the most consequential of my education.

While Russia dropped bombs less than a hundred miles away from where I lived, I learned vividly about the human consequences of war. I spent the afternoons after my language classes volunteering at a Peace Corps-run Ukrainian refugee center in Chisinau, doing whatever was possible in an underfunded, overwhelmed space where crises did not wait for schedules or deadlines. As formal channels struggled to keep pace, I raised several thousand dollars from family and friends in the U.S. to purchase basic necessities—toiletries, medical supplies, and items as simple as school materials.

Trying to make sense of these experiences marked my first foray into journalism. I wrote an editorial for the Greensboro News & Record about the fundraising effort, using writing to connect readers to what was unfolding on the ground.

The people I encountered complicated any single story. I met families separated by senseless violence, children fleeing unaccompanied, and injured elderly couples who had crossed the border by foot. I met Russians who fled Russia because of political oppression and fears of being conscripted into a war where they would be pitted against family just across the border. I also watched intelligent people fall victim to Russian state propaganda, echoing claims about Ukrainian aggression and framing refugees as perpetrators of mass crimes. In fact, I lived with such a family. It was a stark realization about how the most dangerous lies are built from partial truths, warped into alternate realities. To have my host mother accuse me of hiding candy in a potted plant was one thing; to hear her repeat false Russian claims was quite another.  

It was that lesson in the power of education—not as knowledge accumulation, but as resistance to manipulation—that I took most strongly with me when I finally set foot onto Wake Forest’s campus. How do we find truth when information is fragmented, conflicting, or deliberately distorted?

I have spent my time at Wake Forest studying journalism, political theory, and language in pursuit of those answers. Over the past four years, that work has taken me across five continents—from Kyrgyzstan to South Africa to Chile—as I studied three languages through six study-abroad programs. Each of these experiences had uncomfortable moments of miscommunication, misjudgment, and humility, but also connection and newfound understanding. 

A liberal arts education, at its best, is not necessarily about arriving at the “right” position. It is about learning how power shapes narratives, how language limits and expands thought, and how history lives in the present. It teaches us to recognize when a story is incomplete and to ask who has fostered and benefits from that incompleteness—and urges us to speak with those people too. It grants us the ability to master imbalances in information and encourages us to ask ourselves how we can use that knowledge for good.

Facts and truth are sometimes uncomfortable—especially where power depends on their distortion. While working as a journalist at a local news station in Cape Town, South Africa, I covered stories ranging from tourism to government corruption. When my questions complicated the narrative that interviewees wanted to present, I was often met with silence—or even angry replies that did not require a translation of the local languages to understand. 

But honest inquiry is not about being welcome or being comfortable. It is about remaining steadfast when you are not, despite what consequences you may face. In summer 2025, when I interned at the global news organization Radio Free Europe, I spent my time advocating for journalists unjustly imprisoned for reporting facts that their governments preferred to keep hidden. As the stakes rise, so does resistance to truth. 

My experiences have left me alert, but not cynical. I have met journalists operating inside oppressive state apparatuses, but also those risking their safety to challenge them. Again and again, I have seen people choose to keep asking questions anyway.

When I arrived at Wake Forest after a year that had fundamentally disrupted how I understood power, truth, and responsibility, I was not looking for comfort or consensus, but for a place that would take inquiry seriously and peel back the layers of implicit assumption. For me, Wake Forest became that place not through grand moments, but through accumulation: late-night conversations sitting on dorm room floors, professors’ marginal notes written in the barely legible cursive of a generation raised in the 1900s, and classmates willing to challenge ideas until they held up. Even when I couldn’t find concrete answers, I could find better understanding. 

The world is saturated with information and yet starving for understanding. Our attention-economy environment does not reward complexity: speed, certainty, simplicity, and even lies travel further. But complexity is not a weakness. Understanding is not found in an algorithm designed to reinforce what one already thinks. It demands patience, rigor, and the courage to sit with circumstances that resist simplification.

Moldova was not comfortable. Wake Forest was not meant to be either. What this education has given me—and what I believe it has already given us—is the discipline to resist the appeal of easy conclusions. A willingness to pay attention when we are met with pushback. To understand deflection and resistance not as a dead end, but as a signal to dig deeper. If we are armed with the ability to recognize resistance to truth and the forces that sustain these efforts, then the responsibility that follows is simple, even if it is not easy: to keep asking, to keep listening, and to carry the work forward of pursuing truth long after we leave this campus.

The Dangers of Indifference

by Lauren Veldhuizen, 2026

As we stand on the threshold of our future, we cannot help but notice that the road ahead feels uncertain. Trust in one another often extends only as far as our agreement. At Wake Forest, we have learned to think, debate, and challenge each other in pursuit of intellectual honesty and moral growth. Yet, the society we are about to enter faces a pervasive illusion: that ideas are inherently dangerous and must be suppressed rather than debated.

Recent events expose the resurgent forces of anger, hatred, and emotionally charged violence toward those with whom we disagree. The blatant promotion and even celebration of a fellow human being’s embarrassment, downfall, or death has become alarmingly normalized in our polarized world. We all feel this alienation, regardless of our beliefs or politics. Yet, this trend points to a deeper, more insidious problem: the poisonous assumption that ideas themselves are dangerous. I believe it is up to us, the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and doers, to challenge and change this notion.

Now, do not misunderstand me: history is marked by the bloody consequences of so-called ‘dangerous ideas.’ Communism, fascism, racism, sexism, and other false teachings have stolen the minds and lives of millions; it is no wonder we are wary of them. Yet, I would argue that the real peril lies not in the ideas themselves, but in the indifference of those who fail to challenge them. I willfully concede that ideas are powerful, but an idea is only as strong as its weakest defense. Indifference is the breeding ground where such ‘isms’ grow unchecked—not because of their power, but because no one dares to confront them in the arena of debate. 

In today’s political climate, this illusion that ideas themselves are inherently dangerous perpetuates toxic, shallow discourse, because if something is dangerous, our instinct is to avoid or suppress it, not to engage with it. Engaging with any kind of danger goes against those instincts. Furthermore, when we perceive an idea as a threat, we treat both it and its creator as an indiscriminate enemy. Our impulse, then, is to seek absolute victory over them—often by resorting to trolling, insults, and, unfortunately, violence. Thus, the tradition of robust debate decays into a fight to the death at the expense of freedom of thought. 

The only way to dispel a perceived ‘dangerous idea’ for good is to propose a better one. Our goal should be to demonstrate how flawed an idea is and to present a more effective alternative using sound reasoning. Rather than weaponizing emotion to silence discourse, disarm the other side with evidence and logic. Well-reasoned dialogue is how opinions truly change. As alumni of Wake Forest University, we will have the chance to reject those who advocate conviction without contemplation and to champion ideas that are thoughtfully explained and admirably defended. If the goal of debate is merely to win, then the purpose is lost. Instead, debates should aim to foster persuasion, understanding, and collaboration—qualities that reflect the motto and creed we cherish here at Wake Forest: Pro Humanitate, For Humanity.

I vividly remember sitting in the front row of Dr. Amoureux’s Ethics and Agency class in my junior spring. He introduced me to my favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, but it was she who introduced me to the concept of “the banality of evil” after reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi responsible for orchestrating the mass deportation and genocide of Jews. What shocked me most was Eichmann’s audacity to claim he was “just doing his job”; he was, in a word, indifferent. 

Arendt argues that indifference and evil breathe the same air. “Evil,” she wrote, “comes from a failure to think. It defies thought, for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there.” So you see, engaging in thoughtful dialogue is not just about changing minds—it is about preventing the proliferation of monsters and convincing people they are wrong when they do monstrous things. 

Indifference is antithetical to who we are as Demon Deacons. Pro Humanitate insists we do not lie down in indifference but stand up for what we believe in, inviting minds and hearts to change—for the sake of humanity. As we step into a fractured world, it is time to end the myth of “dangerous ideas.” With our diplomas in hand and our minds newly sharpened, we must rekindle a love of thoughtful arguments and gracious concessions. It is up to each of us to carry the call of Pro Humanitate forward. So, never settle for indifference. Relentlessly pursue truth. Defend your ideas with everything you have—and if you are proven wrong, rest in the satisfaction that you are wiser than you were before–the only real danger is not caring enough to try. I cannot wait to see what this incredible class of thinkers and doers will accomplish. I know it will be astounding, because Demon Deacons, by both nature and creed, are not indifferent—they make a difference. Congratulations, Class of 2026. We made it. Now, let’s be the difference.

Running With It

by Anna Luisa Berenguer Nascimento, 2026

I am, at heart, a planner.

When I decided to leave Brazil and go to college in the United States, I did what I always do when I am nervous, I researched. Business seemed like the safest, most strategic choice, so I built a mental spreadsheet of what my Wake Forest life would look like. I thought that if I prepared enough, I could avoid feeling lost or making mistakes.

What I did not plan for was what it would feel like to live at a university in another country, knowing no one, in a place that did not yet feel like mine. Very quickly, Wake began to teach me a truth I did not want to learn. Preparation is important, but it will not always be enough to protect you from failure.

I learned that first at Subway. Early in my freshman year, some friends invited me to go there for dinner. I tagged along…and instantly panicked. So, I did what any good planner would do, I stepped back and observed from the chip rack, listening to how people ordered and mentally practicing what I would say.

After a few visits, I decided I was ready. As soon as the worker asked, “What kind of bread?,” my mind went blank. My English evaporated, and I ordered something completely different from what I had planned. It was nothing like the smooth, perfectly prepared interaction I had imagined.

But I survived. I walked away with my first Subway sandwich…and a realization. I had done my research. It still was not enough to stop me from messing up. And that was okay. I could stumble, learn, and try again. 

The same lesson showed up at my first home American football game. I arrived having looked up where the stadium was and what time the shuttle left. I felt prepared until I learned, just before kickoff, that freshmen were supposed to run across the field.

Suddenly I was standing among hundreds of nervous peers, about to sprint across a field in front of everyone. There was no time to overthink it. The gates opened, and we ran. It was not  graceful or fast, but it was another Wake lesson. You can study everything and still face something you never saw coming, and sometimes the only thing to do is take a deep breath and, literally, run with it.

Academically, I arrived with a plan too. I was going to be a business major. I had researched the classes and the “doors it would open.” Then I made the rookie mistake of signing up for an 8 a.m., assuming it would be “just like high school.”

My 8 a.m. was BIO 150 with Dr. Tague, and I am still convinced that one of the only reasons I stayed in that class is because I did not really understand how dropping classes worked. I woke up fifteen minutes before class, sprinted to Winston Hall half-awake, and waited to see which Hawaiian shirt he would wear that day. Somewhere between lectures and lab reports, my careful plan shifted. The questions that caught my attention were not about markets or investments; they were about cells, evolution, and the brain. The class I had by accident became the reason I changed my major to biology. No amount of planning could have predicted that the thing I thought I would just endure would become the thing I loved.

My first research lab deepened that lesson. It was my first moment of belonging, but also an experience with repeated failure. Sitting around a table with people who were just as excited as I was to talk about animal behavior and neural circuits, I realized my “niche interests” were shared. I was not just at Wake Forest; I was with people who thought like me.

Together, we designed careful experiments, expecting we would see clear patterns in the animals’ behavior. Instead, they did what animals do best, whatever they wanted. Our neat predictions dissolved into a graph that looked more like modern art than data. We had to admit our design did not work, go back to the drawing board, and try again. In research, preparation is everything, you read the literature, write protocols, control variables. And still, things go wrong. You cannot plan the animals into behaving. You can only plan your response when they do not.

Outside the lab, Wake kept giving me practice with that same idea of unpredictability. In the CLASS Office, Laura walked with me through more schedule mishaps and last-minute study plans than I would like to admit, helping me to treat each one not as failure, but as information: What happened? What can we change? How can you try again?

Over and over, Wake Forest confronted me with the same pattern, I prepared, I tried…and things still went wrong. The litany is a long one: I mispronounced words, chose the wrong sandwich bread, changed my major, designed experiments that fell apart, and lived through late-night “I definitely should have started this earlier” realizations.

What changed over these four years was not that I stopped planning. I still like lists and spreadsheets and color-coded calendars. The change was that I stopped believing that perfect preparation would save me from failure, and I stopped seeing failure as the end of the story. Wake Forest did not remove uncertainty from my life or stop me from making mistakes. It taught me that the real measure of who we become is not how perfectly we execute the initial plan, but rather how resiliently we respond when the plan falls apart.

As I graduate, I am still someone who gets nervous before new experiences, who sometimes starts too late, who likes to feel ready. But now I know that preparation will not always protect me from every surprise–and that I do not need it to, because at Wake Forest I have learned what to do when things do not go the way I planned.

Wake Forest has taught me how to do what I did that first semester on the American football field, at Subway, and in the lab: take a deep breath, learn what I can, step forward anyway, and run with it.

Brilliant Things

by Alyssa Cheng, 2026

Last spring, a friend asked me to direct him in a one-man show for his theatre honors project: Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan. The play is structured around a list of things worth living for that the narrator creates for his mother, who is dealing with depression. I thought it was a beautifully written play about an important topic that I would be honored to help share. I did not realize until much later how this play would shape me and how I view my college experience.

If I had the time, I could name endless brilliant things about my time at Wake Forest: sunsets over Wait Chapel, late nights in Scales, Lighting of the Quad. But while those are all great, some of the most brilliant things were a direct result of my darkest moments. My mental health journey began long before I set foot in Winston-Salem, but the progress I have made these past few years has been exponential.

I tested into Spanish 212 for my first semester, but I felt like an imposter. Though I was not failing by any means, I wanted to cry every time I got called on and did not know what to say. One day in September, a wrong answer truly sent me spiraling. As the class moved on, I excused myself, quietly telling my professor through tears that I thought I was having a panic attack. In the hallway, I spent several minutes trying to stop hyperventilating. After class, feeling shaken, embarrassed, and confused, I called the University Counseling Center. I thought maybe I could learn some techniques for calming myself down if an incident like that ever happened again. And I did! But more significantly, I was connected with a therapist who now knows me almost as well as I know myself. We still look back on that Spanish class and marvel at how far I have come.

This progress was tested during my sophomore spring with Linear Algebra II. The previous semester of Linear I made perfect sense to me, so I thought Linear II couldn’t be that much harder, right? Wrong. It challenged me in a way no class had ever challenged me before, not even Spanish 212.

One early homework assignment was particularly frustrating. I felt like a failure, which is not necessarily a unique experience for Wake Forest students. However, as I pushed myself to keep working past my self-imposed bedtime of 10 pm, my brain was flooded with violent thoughts. Voices that didn’t feel like mine told me I should hurt someone, and I broke down in fear of myself. With help from my roommate, I calmed down enough to go to bed, but I knew I could not just let this incident go.

This episode led to a diagnosis and treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. I had been dealing with OCD for years, but in ways that had not seemed bad enough to seek help, like easing my fear of contamination with hand sanitizer. With my therapist’s help, I recontextualized other past thoughts and behaviors that I had not even considered as products of OCD. This awareness did not magically “fix” me, but it gave me the power to start dismantling the mental burden I never realized I was carrying. 

Despite all the ups and downs with my mental health, I had never experienced depression before. Of course I felt sad sometimes, but I always bounced back pretty quickly. I went through most of my life answering “How are you?” with “Good!” and meaning it.

Then I woke up on November 6, 2024. It felt like the headlines were mocking me. How could I have been foolish enough to have hoped for progress? 

Somehow I began my day like normal. I still had to keep up my class attendance, even if it felt like the world was ending.

I feared losing the LGBTQ Center. I feared losing access to reproductive healthcare. I feared for the safety of my Latina best friend from home. I grew suspicious of my peers. All this fear fought to surface through a cloud of numbness.

In two months I was supposed to start leading rehearsals for a play about all the things in life worth living for, and yet I found myself feeling like there was no reason to continue living.

Thankfully, my story did not end there. I had more people than I realized to help me through this low period. Of course, my therapist helped monitor my symptoms and treatment. My mom offered to fly here at my first hint of hopelessness. I assured her it was not necessary; it really was the thought that counted in that moment. One professor brought her dog to campus to lift the spirits of me and my classmates. Another let me cry in her office and reminded me of how many people were ready to keep fighting. I decided that I would be one of those people. 

I decided that, even if it felt like the end of the world, I would keep fighting. For myself, for my community, for humanity. 

This was the mindset with which I entered Every Brilliant Thing rehearsals. Just as the story made a difference in my life, I hope that my direction contributed to our show making a difference here. Outside the theatre, we provided sticky notes for audience members to write their own brilliant things on, and they did not disappoint. The display wall was soon filled with color and hope.

I have no idea how my mental health journey will unfold after I leave Wake Forest, but I do know this: if I ever lose sight of the brilliant things worth living for, I can count on my community to help me find them again.

How Belonging is Learned

by Alfredo Diaz, 2026

When I arrived at Wake Forest, I was welcomed almost immediately. I made friends quickly, enjoyed my classes, and felt included in the ways that matter most. At the same time, I became aware that I had entered a culture that was different from the one I came from, with its own unspoken rules.

This culture was not hostile or exclusionary; it was simply unfamiliar. It lived in how conversations moved, how stories were told, and how people interacted. As I settled in, I realized that belonging here required learning.

Wake Forest is a very particular place. It is Southern, predominantly white, and shaped by a level of affluence that quietly dictates the social rhythm. For me, that did not show up as exclusion, but as a learning curve. I had to be more deliberate, learning the cultural language in real time while I was finding my place.

This was not something anyone demanded of me, and it did not come from unkindness. It came from a simple truth I was learning in real time: connection depends on shared fluency.

So I learned to translate. 

Quietly and intentionally, I trimmed my stories so they would land. I learned that some cultural references, things that shaped how I grew up, had no easy equivalent here, and explaining them often required more context than a conversation could hold. I paid attention to which details drew curiosity and which ones stalled a conversation. I learned when something familiar to me needed framing, and when it was better left unsaid. I learned to read a room, to sense what it was ready to receive, and to move between worlds without calling attention to the movement itself.

This never felt like a burden. It felt necessary. Without that effort, distance would have remained, not out of malice, but out of habit. Distance often forms not because people intend it, but because no one intervenes.

Still, translation always comes with a cost.

When experiences are reshaped to be understood, they do not arrive unchanged. Certain details dull. Certain textures flatten. Over time, I became aware that while I was learning the grammar of Wake Forest, parts of my own story were growing quieter. Not erased, but translated into a version that was easier for others to carry.

This tension never resolved itself. Instead, it stayed with me.

How much can you translate before the story you are telling no longer feels like your own?

When does explanation build understanding, and when does it subtly ask you to make yourself smaller?

What does it mean to belong somewhere without dissolving into it?

There was no answer waiting at the end of those questions. Only discernment, practiced moment by moment.

What I did not expect was how often this same posture would be required of me in different spaces. As I moved through campus, I began to notice how frequently people miss one another without realizing it. Not because they disagree, but because they are speaking from different assumptions, different rhythms, different expectations. Sometimes that meant slowing a conversation long enough for people to hear what was actually being said. Other times, it meant resisting the urge to turn something complex into clarity before it was ready.

This kind of translation does not announce itself. When it works, it is almost invisible. Conversations feel easier. Misunderstandings dissolve before they harden. Nothing about it calls for recognition. But that invisibility carries responsibility. It requires holding more than one perspective at once, remaining patient when clarity would be simpler, and staying present even when resolution is not available. The work is quiet, but the consequences of neglecting it are not.

When I studied abroad with Wake Forest students in Spain and Italy, I watched something shift. Suddenly my friends, who moved so fluently through campus, were the ones navigating unfamiliar customs. Everything required adjustment. Without much deliberation, I found myself helping them translate: how direct to be, what signaled respect, which habits traveled well and which ones did not. I had learned to make those adjustments years earlier, and now I was watching them encounter the same disorientation I once had. The cities were new to all of us, but the experience of learning how to adjust was familiar. I realized then: everyone translates when the context changes. And watching them, something became clear.

Translation is a form of care. It is the quiet work that allows people with different habits, histories, and assumptions to live alongside one another without constant friction. It does not eliminate difference, and it does not resolve it. Instead, it creates the conditions under which shared life can continue, even when understanding is partial and uneven.

Much of our education trains us to look for answers. To resolve tension. To arrive at conclusions and move on. We are rewarded for clarity, for efficiency, for knowing when something is finished. But some of the most important work does not resolve so neatly. It stays open. It requires attention rather than closure, and patience rather than certainty.

Wake Forest gave me the time and space to learn without rushing toward resolution. To listen without immediately responding. To recognize when understanding was partial. To sit with questions that could not be resolved on demand.

In that space, I learned how difference actually works. I learned how to listen without rushing to agreement, how to speak without flattening experience, and how to remain recognizable to myself while staying open to others. I was not expected to arrive fluent. I was given room to learn. The work of translation was never assigned or explained. It was part of shared life.

I realized that belonging is not a destination. It is something that has to be practiced. It requires generosity, humility, and a willingness to do the quiet work that makes shared life possible. It asks us to stay present, even when understanding is incomplete.

That is what Wake Forest taught me. Not simply how to succeed academically, but how to practice the quiet work that makes shared life possible. How to extend care across difference and how to remain both present and whole.

That, I have come to believe, is education at its most demanding, and at its most human.

Everything is a Story

by Grace Hernandez, 2026

I don’t know how not to be a student. 

From five years old to now, twenty-two, learning has been my language of survival. School became repetition, routine, and refuge. Something steady enough to hold a high-functioning autistic child who also lives with OCD. In many ways, learning saved me. But it also hurt me. I was labeled difficult. I was called slow. I was pushed into remedial classrooms that I later learned were not about understanding students, but about forcing compliance. 

 People like me are rarely given the right to access our voices. And for reasons I still do not fully understand, I was handed that right.

 Growing up, I never saw myself reflected in classrooms. I am brown, Native, and Cuban; a mix that never quite fits any mold. In the small Title IX school in Stokes County, excellence had a very specific look, and it was not me. Those spaces were steeped in abstinence culture and white excellence, where giftedness was narrow, and possibility was conditional. I learned early that numbers matter more than nuance. By high school, competition replaced curiosity. I was not first, second, third, or even fourth in my class. I lived in fifth place. Numbers became my proof of worth. 

When I arrived at Wake Forest, I arrived afraid.

Afraid of being found out.

Afraid of being too much.

Afraid of being nothing at all.            

I remember standing on the Quad for the first time, surrounded by the brick buildings that looked permanent, rooted, certain of themselves. Everything here felt older than me, like it already knew who it was, even if I didn’t. Wake Forest was beautiful in a way that felt almost cruel when I was struggling. The trees bloomed whether I was okay or not. The bells rang whether I felt ready or not. 

My first home was Angelou Hall. A twin XL bed. A desk too small for my anxiety. Nights where the quiet felt louder than any classroom could ever be. I cried into those sheets more times than I can count, whispering to myself, Don’t you dare give up.

I learned every study space on the campus, it felt like. I mapped them like lifelines. Library floors where no one would look at me. Corners where I could disappear into productivity. The Rotunda in Wait Chapel became my refuge, a place where silence felt sacred instead of lonely. I convinced myself that if I stayed busy enough, nothing else could touch me. 

The beauty of Wake Forest is not that it makes you feel intelligent.

The tragedy is that it teaches you how much you do not know.

The realization came slowly, and then all at once. Becoming a URECA researcher and scholar pulled me out of the safety of answers and into the vulnerability of questions. I found myself sitting in rooms with administrators, teachers, and educators from across the country. I was listening more than speaking, learning how systems shape people long before people ever get a say in them. Wake forced me to confront my positionality. I am a minority, and I am proud to be. But I also walk this campus with access, security, and a platform that many people will never be afforded. Wake did not allow me to ignore that tension. 

There were moments I felt invisible here –walking past Reynolda, past Wait Chapel, past students who seemed so sure of where they were going and what they wanted to do in life. And there were moments I felt impossibly seen; by a professor’s quiet check-in, by a mentor’s open door, by a campus that allowed me to sit in confusion without demanding certainty. 

Students are conditioned to think, produce, and repeat for regulations and rankings. Wake slowly unraveled that instinct in me. It showed me how efficiency without empathy damages people. How brilliance without humility leaves bodies behind. Sitting at my desk late at night, surrounded by research articles, reports, and interview transcripts, I realized that my education was not about mastery. It was about responsibility. Wake taught me that knowledge without care is hollow and that believing you already know is one of the most dangerous positions you can take. 

The most feared words in my vocabulary used to be almost and was. 

I was almost good enough.

Wake challenged that lie – not by rewarding me more, but by stripping away the illusion that achievement equals identity. 

At a film screening for my community partners, I watched students stand on a stage and tell stories the world had tried to silence. Sitting in the dark theater, I cried, not because I felt sorry for them, but because I recognized myself. Being a victim of a system changes nothing. Bearing witness changes everything. 

Everything is a story.

Wake Forest finished raising me, not by making me certain, but by taking certainty away. It humbled an overachiever into a listener. It taught a straight-A student that she was still worthy on her worst day. That she was human before she was impressive. Wake made me sit with the beauty and tragedy of knowing nothing – and showed me that unknowing is not failure. It is formation. 

People say college is the best four years of your life. I think that is one of the most dangerous lies we tell young people. Wake taught me something braver: these are the years where you learn how unfinished you are – and how beautiful that unfinishedness can be. 

Now, when I stand beneath the Chapel, I feel the weight of endings. I am one name among many, one story among thousands that have passed through these brick paths. I didn’t want to come back this semester, not because I didn’t want to be here, but because I knew that once the first Monday class began, there would be no turning back. Wake had done its work. 

And the greatest lesson it left me with is this:

Not knowing is not a weakness. 

Not knowing is where becoming begins.

What Lives Within Us

by Jack Martin, 2026

One of the biggest things that drew me to Wake Forest was the motto Pro Humanitate. It was the backbone of my “Why Wake?” essay and reflected how I understood impact at the time. I believed that living Pro Humanitate meant doing something big – leading, volunteering, making a visible difference that others could easily recognize. I thought that was what it meant to be human. Over time, I came to realize that being human is far less about scale and far more about connection – feeling like you belong and helping others feel the same. Pro Humanitate is not transactional or performative; it is relational.

Looking back, I realize how often we focus on the moments that feel big and overlook the ones that pass quietly. But it is the brief interactions – a conversation after a lecture, a coffee shop exchange, a single email – that end up shaping us most. I think we overvalue big moments because they are easier to identify. They are visible, measurable, and easy to explain. We can name them as milestones and convince ourselves that they are what define us. But the longer I have been at Wake, the more I have realized that the moments that really matter most rarely announce themselves. They do not feel important while they are happening. Often, they only begin to make sense much later, once you can see how they quietly influenced the choices you made and the person you became.

I remember sitting in my seat at the “How to College” freshman orientation feeling lost and unsure if I belonged. No one from my school or hometown had come to Wake, and everything felt unfamiliar. After the session ended, I decided to stay behind and introduce myself to Dr.

Shea. I never imagined that a brief conversation on my second day of college would shape my experience the way it did. It was the first moment at Wake where I felt that I truly belonged. That

small interaction showed me something I had not yet realized – that people often want to meet you where you are, and that connection often begins with the courage to simply reach out.

During the spring semester of my freshman year, I still had not found my group of people. A few weeks before spring break, I signed up, almost impulsively, for a trip to Catalina Island with eleven people I had never met. In that brief moment of fear and vulnerability, clicking that button felt like a risk. I could not have known then that it would lead me into Outdoor Pursuits, a community I now call family. Through shared experiences and time spent outdoors, those eleven strangers made me feel accepted in a way I had not before. That trip showed me that some of the strongest connections come from stepping into unfamiliar spaces and allowing yourself to be open with the people around you.

Before the fall semester of my sophomore year, a growing curiosity about business prompted me to email Dr. Kenny Herbst and request permission to enroll in his marketing class, a course intended for business school students. As a pre-medical student, I was not sure I belonged in that space, and I did not feel like I had the credentials to be there. From the first day, Dr. Herbst welcomed my curiosity. Our conversations after class and during office hours often centered on the intersections of medicine and business, and I found myself applying what I already knew to ideas I was just beginning to explore. When I sent that initial email, I never would have expected to feel understood or at home in the business school. That experience taught me that connection can exist across disciplines, and that curiosity often creates opportunities even if we do not yet feel ready to step into them.

In hindsight, these subtle moments – a conversation, a decision, and an email – shaped my college experience in ways I could not have predicted. None of them felt significant at the time. There

was no clear sense that I was changing my path or building toward something larger. Each moment simply felt like a small choice made in the face of uncertainty. It was not until much later that I could see how those choices accumulated. Together, they changed the direction of my time at Wake, not because they were carefully planned, but because they opened doors to people and experiences I never would have encountered otherwise. Without them, my college experience – and the way I understand connection – would have unfolded very differently.

I came to understand that Pro Humanitate is not defined by service projects or fundraisers alone. It is something that you embody in how you show up for others – through openness, attention, and making others feel welcome. Over time, the people and experiences at Wake reshaped what that motto meant to me, and in doing so, changed how I live and show up for others. That shift changed the way I thought about impact. Service, leadership, and action still mattered, but I began to see that their meaning came from the foundational relationships beneath them. Pro Humanitate was not about checking a box or completing a requirement; it was about how consistently and thoughtfully you engage with the people around you. It became less about what I was doing and more about how I was doing it.

A few months ago, my roommate and I were playing pickleball when two guys approached us and asked if we wanted to play doubles. We soon learned they were exchange students from Germany, and it was their first week in the United States. Over the following months, what began as a simple question turned into shared meals, time spent playing sports, and eventually welcoming them into my home for their first Thanksgiving. By that point, Pro Humanitate had stopped being something I thought about and started being something I practiced. In reflecting on that moment, I recognize the courage it took for them to start that conversation. What felt

small to me may have felt like a risk to them. I hope that, in responding with openness, I was able to offer them the same sense of belonging that Wake had once given me, thus bringing my experience full circle.

In the end, it is the small moments – rooted in courage, vulnerability, and openness – that quietly compound into life-changing experiences. For me, that has become the simplest – and the most meaningful – definition of what it means to be human.

The Discipline of Softness

by Dejanay Thomas, 2026

For all four years at Wake Forest University, my room has been pink. It was not a fleeting aesthetic choice or an isolated decorative detail; it was intentionally and consistently pink. With pink walls, pink bedding, and pink calendars, my space remained unchanged even as my assignments grew heavier and expectations intensified. In an environment that often values seriousness, efficiency, and restraint, pink felt almost rebellious. It symbolized softness in a culture that prizes endurance. I chose pink not only for its comfort, but because it reminded me that learning did not require me to shrink or lose my humanity to succeed.

When I arrived at Wake Forest, I believed education required restraint, that credibility came from seriousness, composure, and emotional distance. In that view of learning, pink felt inappropriate: too expressive, too visible, too gentle. I treated it as separate from my academic life, a private comfort rather than a legitimate part of how I learned. I had not yet realized that environments shape education just as much as lectures and exams, or that making room for care could be a deliberate, disciplined choice rather than a distraction from achievement.

Wake Forest soon tested those assumptions. The pace was quicker than I expected, the expectations often unspoken, and the pressure to appear composed constant. Learning extended beyond the classroom into meetings, offices, hallways, and quiet moments of comparison. I noticed how often seriousness was treated as proof of competence and how easily softness was seen as weakness. I learned how to meet deadlines, accept responsibility, and lead others, but I also learned how tempting it was to conceal parts of myself to keep up.

There were days when success felt more like a performance than an actual achievement, when accomplishment seemed defined more by endurance than understanding. During those moments, pink became less of a decoration and more of a refuge, a place I turned to when the day required too much composure, where learning could be processed rather than merely survived. Over time, I began to see how deeply the environment influences learning. Spaces that demanded constant efficiency left little room for curiosity or care, while warm spaces made it easier to ask questions, recover from mistakes, and remain engaged rather than defensive. Pink transformed from a place of recovery into a way of understanding learning itself. It taught me that care is not the absence of structure, but what allows structure to function. Softness, when chosen intentionally, can be rigorous. This realization reshaped how I understood leadership not as emotional distance or control, but as the responsibility to create conditions where others can learn, grow, and feel safe enough to be honest.

That understanding followed me into my role as a Resident Advisor. Being an RA required consistency, accountability, and decision-making, but it also required care. I quickly learned that people do not bring only their questions to college; they also carry their fears, identities, and exhaustion.

In that role, I did not try to lead through detachment. I aimed to lead through presence checking in without hovering, listening without fixing, and setting boundaries while maintaining compassion. Creating spaces where residents felt comfortable asking for help did not weaken expectations; it strengthened trust. Some of the most meaningful moments were quiet ones: conversations in hallways, reassurances, reminders that uncertainty did not equal failure. Those interactions taught me that care is not supplemental to education; it is central to it.

As my time at Wake Forest continued, one question surfaced beneath everything I was learning: What does higher education teach us about who we are allowed to be while we learn? Too often, seriousness is confused with depth and neutrality with maturity, encouraging students to succeed by shrinking parts of themselves and mistaking self-erasure for discipline.

Pink forced me to confront that tension. It challenged the belief that credibility requires hardness, or that care must be hidden to be taken seriously. It asked whether rigor loses something essential when it refuses softness, and whether education can truly be transformative if it demands distance rather than connection. What pink ultimately taught me was not how to avoid difficulty, but how to move through it with intention. It taught me that care is a skill, one that must be practiced, protected, and taken seriously.

Wake Forest gave me knowledge, credentials, and opportunities alike. More importantly, it taught me how to exist within demanding systems without losing my humanity. Pink became a reminder that I could be ambitious without becoming hardened, disciplined without becoming distant, and responsible without becoming cold. Education, I learned, is not only about what we master, but about how we learn to live with others while we do.

As I prepare to leave Wake Forest, I do not take pink with me as merely a color, but as a permission to build spaces that hold people, to lead with care and clarity, and to reject the idea that seriousness must come at the expense of softness. If we allow education to make room for warmth alongside rigor, care alongside achievement, and authenticity alongside ambition, learning becomes more than individual success. It becomes communal. Pink taught me that. Wake Forest gave me the space to learn it.

What Time Keeps 

by Julia Valente, 2026

Time at Wake Forest is everywhere. 

The Wait Chapel clock rises above the quad as a constant reminder of the passage of time. As a steady presence, the clock on the tower neither rushes nor waits. It simply keeps time. In college, time is measured in four years, eight semesters, and one hundred twenty course credit hours. Time is tracked through calendars, syllabi, exam countdowns, and moments until graduation. Time becomes something we spend, manage, waste, and race against, as we are constantly reminded of how much time we have left. 

Early on, I felt the pressure to have everything figured out, to know my path, to prove I belonged in classrooms filled with confident students. I measured my days through accomplishments and worried about falling behind an invisible clock I thought everyone else was following. 

However, the longer I have been here at Wake Forest, the more I have realized that the most meaningful parts of time are the ones that cannot be measured. 

Some of the moments that shaped me most did not feel sufficiently significant when they occurred—sitting in “The Culture of Youth Sports” first-year seminar, grappling with ideas about equity and responsibility as future adults caring for America’s youth. Staying late at ZSR, memorizing the organic chemistry reactions that demanded more patience than I thought I had. Learning slowly that growth often occurs quietly, often unnoticed by anyone at all. 

Over time, I realized that Wake Forest was not asking me to move faster, but to move deeper, more intentionally, and more critically.

In the classroom, time taught me humility. Learning did not always come easily, especially when the material required me to learn an entirely new language, confront complex biological systems, challenge my ethical responsibilities, and examine my own assumptions. But discomfort taught me to persist, ask more critical questions, and value understanding over performance. Education, I learned, is not measured by speed, but by depth. 

Outside the classroom, time taught me empathy. 

Through leading Campus Kitchen shifts, tutoring chemistry students in the Chemistry Center, and serving as a Student Director of the STEM Outreach program for the youth of Winston-Salem, I learned that meaningful change does not happen in moments. It happens through consistency, listening, and attending to others, even when it’s inconvenient. Advocating for equity and supporting peers is time never rushed or optimized. Those experiences taught me that leadership is not about control or certainty, but about care. 

Time also taught me how to manage responsibility. 

The days when time felt deficient and heavy led me to question whether I was doing too much or not enough. Balancing honors research, leadership positions, academic commitments, and relationships with others felt overwhelming. But those moments forced me to ask myself what mattered the most. Those moments taught me that our purpose at Wake is revealed not by how much we do, but by what we choose to commit ourselves to over time. 

Perhaps the most meaningful lesson Wake Forest has taught me is that time need not be fully understood to be meaningful. 

There were moments when the future felt uncertain, when the power went out across all of campus, when snow days resulted in syllabus adjustments, and when clarity seemed just out of reach. But Wake Forest did not promise certainty. It offered something better: the confidence to proceed regardless and the trust that, even when answers are incomplete, growth is still happening. 

One of the clearest examples of this arose at the Campus Kitchen event, Turkeypalooza. For one week in November, the kitchen appears chaotic, with conversations overlapping across all grade levels, and plates passed from hand to hand, each destined for someone we may never meet. It’s busy, imperfect, strenuous, and fleeting. But standing there, I realized how intentional that moment was. 

Every dish prepared carried the weight of care, embodying the meaning of community at Wake Forest. Every student who stopped to help for one hour or for the entire week chose to devote their time to serving others. In a place where time often feels scarce, we were giving it away freely. 

I remember pausing, hands full, watching the scene unfold. Friends laughed as they worked side by side. Strangers join in without hesitation. No one asked what they would gain from it. The purpose was clear. For that brief moment, time was not about productivity or progress; it was about presence. 

Turkeypalooza ended. The kitchen was cleaned, and students hurried off to their next commitments. But the impact of those hours remained. It continued in the meals delivered and in the quiet reminder that the most meaningful use of time is often one that asks nothing in return. 

That week taught me that time does not need to be grand to be powerful. It only needs to be intentional. 

As graduation approaches, time feels louder. Every experience is framed as a “last”. Last first day of class. Last group project meeting. Last walk in Reynolda Gardens. We are encouraged to hold tightly onto what is ending. But Wake Forest has taught me that nothing meaningful is truly lost. 

Because time does not leave us empty-handed. 

What remains is not the schedule or the syllabus, but the empathy, responsibility, curiosity, and purpose shaped steadfastly over four years. 

Time runs. Time is kept. Time is lost. 

But the most important thing I have learned over the past four years is that time is also endless. The clock on Wait Chapel will keep ticking as time moves forward. But our time is preserved in memory, shaped into lessons, and cherished through experiences. Carrying the wisdom we live out long after we leave this place. Wake Forest will live with me not as a place I once occupied, but as a way I approach the world. And that is what my time will always keep.

From Performance to Presence 

by Alex Wood, 2026

When I arrived at Wake Forest in 2022, I was someone who measured success almost entirely by results. I was completely focused on grades, outcomes, and visible roles. As a freshman on the soccer team, I measured my worth in minutes played, goals scored, and convincing those around me that I belonged. I assumed that if I worked hard enough and wanted success badly enough, fulfillment would naturally follow. It did not. 

My first two seasons were filled with constant self-evaluation. Every practice and game came with immense pressure that I put on myself, and over time it became exhausting. I was terrified of making mistakes and so focused on my own performance that I rarely stopped to enjoy the experience itself. I loved soccer, but I was treating the sport like a transaction, expecting effort to automatically turn into results. The pressure I put on myself left me burnt out and disconnected from something I once found joyful. I was chasing success, but I wasn’t present enough to enjoy it. 

I approached other aspects of my life in the same way that I approached soccer. Wake Forest is a place that attracts highly motivated and high-achieving students, which makes it easy to focus on outcomes rather than experiences – whether that be final grades, internships, or future plans. I was fully bought into this mindset, and it was taking away from the experience of college itself. 

My junior year forced me to reconsider this approach. My role on the soccer team looked different than I had ever imagined. I wasn’t playing as much, and for the first time in my soccer career, effort alone was not going to guarantee the outcome I wanted. I had the choice to either drown in frustration or stay present anyway. Instead of basing my success on how much I was playing or how many goals I was scoring, I decided to focus on what I could control, which was

the daily process. I showed up to practice each day with the intention of improving, and I focused on enjoying the simple act of playing soccer with my teammates. I learned to appreciate practices, shared struggles, and the small moments that often go unnoticed when the focus is only on final outcomes. 

The moment I stopped chasing results and started making a conscious effort to stay present was the moment I began to grow more, both as a player and a person. Letting go of constant self-judgment gave me more confidence than I had ever had before. I was playing because I loved the sport, not because I was trying to prove myself to anyone. 

That mindset was put to the test in a moment I never could have planned for. During the NCAA quarterfinals, a teammate got injured, and I was suddenly subbed into the game. It was the most high-pressure game I had ever played in, and it would have terrified the version of myself who was focused solely on performance and outcomes. Instead, I felt calm, ready, and grateful for the unexpected opportunity to play. I ended up scoring the goal that tied the game, and we advanced to the semifinals – something that had only happened one other time in program history. Ironically, the best result of my college soccer career came when I wasn’t thinking about results at all. I was able to show up fully because I had been present all along, in the preparation and in the relationships that I had built with my teammates. 

My senior season deepened this lesson in a different way. I spent the first half of it injured and unable to contribute to the team in the ways I had hoped to. It was tempting to view this time as something that I had to suffer through until I could play again. Instead, I chose to stay present where I was. Rehab became my new routine, and the bench became a place where I bonded with other injured teammates and cheered on my friends on the field. I learned to find meaning in encouragement, support, and perseverance.

When I was finally cleared to play again, I played with a sense of freedom I had never experienced before. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone or prove anything. I knew it was my last season, and that my time playing the sport that had shaped my life for the past eighteen years was coming to an end. I was trying to just soak up every moment and have fun. That freedom allowed me to become a better player, but more importantly, it made my experience as a college athlete feel complete. I learned that being present is an active choice to engage fully with whatever is thrown at you in the moment. 

This lesson extended far beyond soccer. In the classroom, I found that valuing engagement over perfection allowed me to gain more from my education. I learned more when I focused on curiosity and listening rather than final grades. Some of the most meaningful moments that I had at Wake Forest came from conversations after class, leadership experiences, and relationships I built with professors, teammates, and classmates. 

College often teaches us how to perform by teaching us how to compete, achieve, and move efficiently toward the next goal. What it does not always teach us is how to stay present when things do not go as planned. Wake Forest taught me that education is not always about outcomes, but about presence and showing up for your work, community, and yourself. 

As I prepare to graduate, I know that life beyond Wake Forest will be unpredictable. Careers will shift, plans will change, and success may not always look the way I expect it to. What I am taking with me is not a guarantee of results, but the ability to stay present, find joy in the process, and trust that growth does not come from control. 

Wake Forest has shaped me into a more confident version of myself, not because it taught me how to win, but because it taught me how to be fully here. At the end of the day, it was never

just the outcomes that mattered, it was the experiences and relationships I made along the way and the presence that allowed me to appreciate them.