Folk of ‘Noke: Taylor Williams
By Chamberlain Zulauf
Taylor Williams, from Warrenton Virginia, has a bright disposition which is reflected in her experience at Roanoke College. There is a bright future ahead of her as she finishes a double major in HEX and Public Health with a minor in Psychology. On top of Taylors extensive class work she is a leader in APO. For 2020 Taylor served as the Vice President of Service where she helped coordinate service projects. In particular last year, she did a lot of work with COVID,
“That became a little challenging. So, one of the big things that I was involved in, we do a program called Micah’s Backpack that gives food to children and local Salem elementary schools that are food insecure food, and even for the weekends- in the middle of the pandemic”, said Taylor.
Regrettably, with students not on campus last Spring APO had to be on hold in the meantime. Coming back in fall 2020 Taylor was proactive; she worked with Jesse Griffin in the Office for Civic Engagement to safely have volunteers in the Brotherhood help with buying, packing and delivering food to schools in need.
“We were able to increase the number of bags we did each week as there’s increased need due to people possibly losing jobs and things like that during the summer”, said Taylor.
“I’ve definitely learned to be flexible. We had all these great plans for the second half of the spring 2020 semester, and then we got put online. I had to be creative to figure out ways that people could still do service. Even in the fall, we had some brothers who were still home. Most of our service we try to do for the local community; and when you have people living all over the country, we have to kind of be more creative and figure out, okay, how can we bring service to these people or give them things that they could do in their hometowns?”
Taylor also works with Toy Like Me, which she found through APO. It was a service opportunity she found interesting at a modification day. Taylor became passionate about its cause and even worked as their secretary.
Being an orientation leader since her Sophomore year is another thing Taylor has done on campus. She’s been an O group leader and is now a peer mentor, “So we help you with orientation week, but also through the entirety of the first semester”, said Taylor.
Taylor does a lot of extracurricular work but sometimes it’s the little things which make the best memories:
“I guess it’s kind of two memories that go together. My freshman year we had a really big snow. It was probably 12-18 inches, somewhere in there. It was right near finals week, so classes weren’t canceled. Then this past weekend we had a really big snow again so it’s kind of cool to have like this kind of like bookend like I started my freshman year with snow and then I’m now ending my senior year with snow.And there’s some people that I celebrated both of those things that that was flooding with both times and then there’s also some people that graduated or new friends that I’ve made or whatever… I was thinking about that the other day as we were sledding down the hill right by the fields.”
“As cliche as it is, appreciate your four years here, because I think especially seniors this year, everyone always talks about the juniors in the class below us who had one normal semester and then went into COVID. But almost half of our college experience has also been with COVID. So I think really appreciating those like normal moments that you get, and trying to make the most of every opportunity that you have- Not being afraid to say yes to things that are outside of your comfort zone, I think it’s something that’s really important” said Taylor.
Taylor just decided over winter break that she’ll be going to Shenandoah University for their Master of Occupational Therapy program. The program will take two and a half years to complete.
“I definitely think the past four years have been a transformative experience. Obviously coming in as a freshman at 18 years old, I really hadn’t experienced much outside of my bubble at home. So getting to meet new people, people who think differently than I do, being able to take classes that I’m actually interested in; like I mentioned before, I am a double major. So, really being able to combine the more physical side of Health and Exercise Science and then the more community-based side from public health. I feel like it has really set me up well for my future career.”
And the people. The friends that you make here are for life, like people that are going to be like in my wedding. So definitely not looking forward to saying goodbye to those people in this place in the next couple of months but grateful for the time that I’ve gotten to spend here for sure.”
