While my time with the Brackety-Ack and Roanoke College is coming to a close, I am overjoyed that I got to spend these past four years surrounded by all of y’all. This college’s marketing team hit the nail on the head when they sent a postcard telling of this campus’s ability to build community, and that was when I was a rising senior in high school. I am so glad that that little piece of paper with the classic birds-eye view of campus was enough to get me to tour and eventually apply to this school and no others. While this school has taken actions over the past four years that have undermined many of the reasons that convinced me to attend, I want to keep this positive. Through it all, the college’s promise of community rings true. This campus builds community in so many wonderful ways, from the dozens of clubs bringing people together every week to the CAB events that live on as trinkets or tokens kept in my memory box. In addition to starting your own club, there are many avenues for creating your own community here, which could take the form of writing “mulch” on most every chalkboard you find, though I may have done that already. Whatever you define as a community worth keeping, I encourage you to go out of your way to create it. If you are already in one, I implore you to feed it life whenever you can, because the day when you’re forced to leave or dramatically alter your relationship with it will sneak up on you like a semi-truck.
It’s not easy to put into words the wave of emotions that overcame me as I drove back onto campus this past Sunday, after spending Easter Weekend at home. During that drive, with every new ridge that came into view, a single phrase kept bubbling up: I’m going home. The Brackety-Ack, Roanoke College, Salem, and the whole Roanoke area are all places that bring a myriad of memories and flashes of the future. The Brackety-Ack’s place resides in the Garrett Media Lounge, where I usually meet the Folks of ‘Noke for interviews and where the other editors and I edit and design our respective sections. It has been a joy to work with my fellow editors when time permitted, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that I got emotional doing my final layout two weeks ago. Having been a Brackety-Ack staff since before starting classes and serving as Folks At ‘Noke section editor since the spring of my freshman year, this stretch of the semester has been incredibly bittersweet.
As y’all look forward to the years ahead, I recommend focusing on the aspects of place in your life. In terms of literal locations, where do you feel the safest? The calmest? Where do you feel the most alive? The most connected? Where do you feel the most at home? These are the questions I ask myself when I consider what home means to me, so I hope y’all get the chance to take a moment out of your day and sit with those questions. Though the chapters of your life may splinter and hurriedly start anew, there is always a place where you feel the most you.
Juniper Rogers
Former Folk of ‘Noke Editor
