Hindsight

One of the things that stand out most to me from my first visit to UNC Asheville is a single phrase: “you can’t use my grandma died excuse more than once.” I was on my first campus tour at a school west of my small home town, and I was falling in love. What my short, frizzy-haired tour guide meant by this statement was that I was in a place where I would not be another number on the class roster. However, at this place I would be a member of a community. At this campus, I would receive personal attention and I would be given the opportunity to prove myself. At the University of North Carolina at Asheville I would be given the opportunity for excellence. A few weeks ago I saw that promise come to fruition when I was given the opportunity to attend the North Carolina Teacher Education Forum. This forum is a conference that takes place every year. It is an event for professionals in the field of education, in as many capacities and positions as one can imagine, to gather together and to share their ideas and experiences from their myriad of backgrounds in education. This conference offers esteemed speakers, interactive presentations, and a couple pretty delicious meals. At the forum, there was also a poster presentation for students from different universities during which we were given the opportunity to showcase some of our own experiences as future educators; this was a tremendous honor. Kelsey Cain and I were able to make a poster and present to the attendees of the forum the after school tutoring partnership with the Mountain Housing Authority of Asheville and UNC Asheville’s freshmen teaching fellows. We were able to tell anecdotes from our experiences just one short year ago. We explained the importance of asking freshmen students to step outside their comfort zones and how they grow because of the challenge. We were able to share with many of the best and brightest minds in North Carolina education what we were doing at UNC Asheville, and they were impressed. This was an opportunity most people do not get in a lifetime, let alone as undergraduates, but there we were presenting a project of which we had personally reaped the benefits. As I stood in Raleigh, I realized what my tour guide had meant a few years ago, and I was grateful that by some great cosmic design I had landed at the place that would give me such a wonderful opportunity.


Ariel James