Apr 20, 2017 By Kimmi Baston columnist 8 min read

If I could predict the future, as many of us wish was possible, I would have been saved months of tears, anxiety and panic three and a half years ago. 

If I could predict the future, I would have known that Waynesburg University would become, truly, my home, the only place in the world I am completely me. 

If I could predict the future, I would have seen the way that four years would change my life, and I might have felt excitement, not fear.

In August 2013, I wasn’t ready for college. I don’t mean in a “I don’t know how to be on my own or do my laundry” kind of way – I had no problem being self-sufficient. I mean that I wasn’t ready for the “next step” aspect of college. 

I had just come into my own as a senior in high school, gotten comfortable in my own skin, and suddenly I was leaving my home and my family for what felt like an eternity.

Mind you, I did love Waynesburg. I thought (and I turned out to be right) that it was exactly the right place for me. It wasn’t Waynesburg’s fault that my first semester as a college freshman was characterized by a constant knot in my stomach, the hourly urge to cry and an increased tendency to avoid other humans.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. There was something about moving forward, growing up, taking on more and more responsibility and being away from home that just scared me to death. I won’t ever know the exact cause of my anxiety.

I live only an hour and 15 minutes away from Waynesburg, and I went home every other weekend like clockwork for my entire freshman year, but that didn’t matter. I still spent every day trying to find a way out. I wanted to transfer to Saint Vincent College and commute. 

I thought maybe I should take a semester off and pick this up another time. And if those couldn’t happen, I wanted to be left alone – let me do my homework and go to my classes, and don’t try to make me be a part of this campus. 

But that’s not how it works.

There were a few pivotal moments, all of which ended in tearful phone calls to my mother, which miraculously started to ebb away my anxiety and replace it with curiosity and the slightest hint of ambition.

The first wasn’t so much a single moment as a series of encounters that felt a bit like torture. Those encounters were conversations with then-Executive Editor of the Yellow Jacket Nick Farrell and my advisor, Dr. Brandon Szuminsky. There were days when I honestly hated them, because they were absolutely determined that I would be heavily involved in the Yellow Jacket and in the Department of Communication, and I wanted no such thing.

Now, my gratitude toward the two of them for pushing me to the edge renders me speechless. By the end of my freshman year, they pushed me so far that I was forced to jump – and, as I should have known they would, they caught me and have been carrying me ever since.

There was another moment, during a meeting with a few department professors on Assessment Day, that helped change my direction. 

Dr. Chad Sherman, in what was most likely a rather innocuous comment, indicated that not only should I consider becoming the Executive Editor of the Yellow Jacket (a horrifying thought, at the time), but also that the department faculty believed and expected that I would do great things.

Well.

If they really had that faith in me, I must be doing something right. If they really had that faith in me, how could I let them down?

***

A column, even a mushy senior column, should have a moral of some sort, so I suppose this is what I’m getting at: Things (people, places, experiences) can only change you the way Waynesburg University changed me if you let them. 

Since my freshman year, I have indeed become the Executive Editor of the Yellow Jacket, the newspaper which was the starting point for making Waynesburg my home. There, I’ve found people who have taught me so much and allowed me to teach them, which has been the greatest blessing. 

I found a friend and lead staffer who, for some unknown reason, believes in me and who has been the difference between my success and failure and who has made the agony of the last two years bearable.

I found in myself a leader and an artist, and I discovered where my passions and my skills lie and where they intersect.

I found a source of immense pride, an outstanding legacy for me and for every one of my staff members.

I found someone to love, a boy who began as a staff writer and has become a man more important to me than anyone else, someone who has made my last year in college the best of my life and who will stay with me long after I have left this campus.  

If I could predict the future three and a half years ago, I could have seen him coming and known what joy awaited me.

If I could predict the future, I could have understood my place at Waynesburg University – what I was meant to do, see and become. 

But if I could predict the future, everything I am would not mean nearly as much as it does in the wake of an internal war. 

I am about to leave, and my heart is breaking. But that fact means one good thing: three and a half years ago, I stayed. Oh, how glad I am that I did.