Building strength despite the lack of racial diversity

I have had a complicated relationship with St. Joe’s over the past four years. Anyone who has ever listened to me for more than five minutes knows that I am very vocal about the things I both like and dislike about the university. No situation is perfect and after my four years at St. Joe’s, that lesson has been fully concretized in my mind.

Because no institution is perfect, I won’t wax poetic with infinite idealism over this university. We dedicate four years to learning and growing in this environment. And for that, of course, we come to enjoy certain things about St. Joe’s, but I think more importantly call into question things that we find fault with.

These faults that St. Joe’s has I’ve grown to not simply dismiss, but see the value in. As I’m leaving St. Joe’s, I can look at our institution’s flaws and still find something redeemable, especially when these faults have taught me a great deal about life.

St. Joe’s isn’t perfect, but in its flawed countenance I have learned my own place in the world, and I have drawn strength from discomfort.

For four years, I was a black woman on a predominantly white campus. That is an indisputable fact. I spent most of my four years at St. Joe’s hyper aware of my blackness in a way that I had never really contemplated before.

Maybe it was because I was away from home for the first time, but even at home I went to predominantly white schools. My educational environment was seemingly unchanged, but I was actually changing and growing. And for that, I have to thank St. Joe’s.

And I don’t mean to thank the university for its lack of racial diversity or the ever present minoritization of students, but I have to thank the university for creating a space where I was forced to persevere and find strength in myself to continue.

I could have left St. Joe’s. I spent the first two years here very seriously contemplating leaving. Retention of students of color is something that the university struggles with. I was another student of color to add to the percentage. I knew this reality, but I didn’t want to give up.

For most of my academic life, if something didn’t come easy to me, I would give up. If math was causing me difficulty, I’d shut down. It was only through my parents’ intervention that I would get the extra help that I needed.

College was different though. It was a whole new experience, and I wasn’t just struggling over AP Statistics. College was the foundation for my future.

With that in mind, my parents told me when they dropped me off my first year that in college, choices were not going to be made for me. I had “skin in the game,” and college was a place that I would have to truly navigate for myself by myself.

So when I was met with this real urge to leave, an urge that pushed me to apply to transfer to University of Maryland, I took stock.

I had just changed my major, and I was having conversations with professors about leaving the university. One English professor, who is retired now, even expressed to me that he enjoyed my time in his Craft of Language course, and he was sad to see me leave St. Joe’s.

It was a this nice comment from this professor and others over those two years that helped me realize that I had unwittingly forged a connection with professors in the English department.

My mindset shifted from simply wallowing in the negatives that came out of St. Joe’s lack of racial diversity to finding a way to cope with these negatives and push through. And I began to think of opportunity in spite of a clear lack of racial diversity and a clear habit of tokenizing those few racially diverse students for the image of the university.

And that is where I drew my strength. I realized that I could do more at and for a university that was practically devoid of students like me if I stayed. Through hard work. I could earn my legitimate place at this university and distinguish myself.

If I had transferred to University of Maryland, I would not have been a Writing Center tutor nor the Opinions Editor for The Hawk Newspaper. I wouldn’t have run my own radio show or become the vice president of Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honors Society. I for sure wouldn’t have as close or as productive of a relationship with the faculty within the English department.

At St. Joe’s, in spite of this socially and racially constructed isolation, I pushed myself to grow and to aspire to things that I never thought I would ever do. I rose above my discomfort to insert myself into a university community that for two years I’d thought I’d never truly be a part of.

St. Joe’s, for all of its faults, pushed me to be confident and strong and to never doubt my intelligence nor my ability to rise to any challenge.

I will be leaving St. Joe’s with a greater understanding of the world, but more importantly a greater understanding of my ability to persevere even in the most uncomfortable and isolating situations.

And for that, I thank this university.