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The Last Door I Locked as an RA

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The last time I locked a door as a resident assistant at the University of Tampa, I stood there with my keys in my hand and looked back down the hall. I’d already graduated. My family had gone home. I’d been commissioned as an Army officer. And somehow, standing in that quiet hallway was when it really sank in that college was over. A job I knew by heart Being a resident assistant was my first real job at the University of Tampa. I got it before I got a work-study job, and I started as a sophomore. So for three of my four years in college, being an RA was part of my everyday life. By senior year, I knew the routine cold. My friend Ginger and I had been RA partners all three years. We did our weekly rounds together. I knew how to set up the bulletin board so people could find out what was going on. I knew how to plan a program, welcome students when they moved in, and check their rooms when they moved out. I knew where to look for damaged furniture and where somebody might have left som...
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Finding My People: How Community Changed My College Experience at a PWI

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A simple act of kindness led me to an unexpected community at the University of Tampa. Reflecting on friendship, Caribbean culture, and finding belonging as a Black student at a predominantly white institution. When we talk about college, we spend a lot of time discussing where to go, what to study, and what we hope to do after graduation. We don't always spend enough time talking about the people who will help us get through the experience. Looking back at my years at the University of Tampa, I realize how much of what I loved about college came from finding my people. And some of those people entered my life in ways I never could have planned. Starting Over When I Thought I Had Settled In My sophomore year put me in an uncomfortable position. My best friend wasn't returning to the university. A friend from home had also decided not to come back. I was returning to a familiar campus, but part of what had made it familiar was gone. I had to figure out where I fit all over again...
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The Quiet After Graduation: The Part Nobody Prepared Me For

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On Friday, I was commissioned as an officer. On Saturday, I graduated from college. By Sunday morning, I was waiting for someone to tell me they were ready to check out of their room. That is how quickly things changed. There had been family, friends, hugs, gifts, and celebrations. There had been the excitement of reaching a milestone I had spent four years working toward. Then everybody went home. And I still had a job to do. Graduating Didn’t End My Responsibilities During my sophomore and junior years, I worked as a resident assistant. By the time I became a senior, I understood the routine of closing out a floor. Students packed their belongings. I walked through their rooms with them, checked that everything was in order, and completed the paperwork. After everyone left, there were final inspections and checklists. One detail always mattered: whether you had graduating seniors on your floor. If you did, you had to stay beyond the departure of the underclassmen so those seniors cou...
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Are You Sure You Want to Go to Pine Bluff?

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Everybody who knows me knows one thing: I love Pine Bluff, Arkansas. That’s my hometown. That’s where I grew up. My mother was there. My grandparents were there. Aunts, uncles, cousins—so much of my foundation was connected to that place. I enjoyed getting out and experiencing the world beyond Pine Bluff. But I also loved going back. What never crossed my mind was that my friends might want to go with me. I Loved Home. I Just Didn’t Think Anyone Else Would Be Interested. When you grow up somewhere, you see it through a particular set of glasses. You know what you love about it. You also know what it doesn’t have. And when you start meeting people from other places, those differences become even more noticeable. My friends were from the Northeast, Florida, and the Caribbean. They had connections to places like Brooklyn, Chicago, and Miami. In my mind, their hometowns offered things that mine didn’t. So when I headed back to Arkansas, I never thought to ask, “Do you want to come?” I wasn...
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Nobody Tells You That Starting Over Means Creating Your Own Culture

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When I got my first professional job in Tallahassee, Florida, I thought I had accomplished the goal. I had a job. At that point in my life, that was really all I had been thinking about. I wasn't looking for a community. I wasn't thinking about quality of life. I wasn't thinking about work-life balance or whether I would have people around me who shared my interests. I was looking for a job. And when I found one, I was excited. This was the beginning of my professional career. I had finished college, and now I was stepping into the next phase of adulthood. What I didn't understand was that I wasn't just starting a new job. I was starting a new life. College Had Given Me More Than I Realized Before moving to Tallahassee, I had spent four years in Tampa. During those years, I had built an entire infrastructure around myself without really thinking about it. I knew the area. I knew where to go. I had relationships. I had pledged my fraternity. I had graduated from the ...
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Rediscovering Me on the Karate Mat at 54

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When I decided to compete in karate again, I turned to the person whose judgment I trusted most: my karate teacher. She encouraged me to come down to Florida and compete at least one more time with her there. That meant flying from the Northeast to Tallahassee, spending a week training with her in person for the first time in years, and then traveling with her and a couple of other students to a tournament in Crestview. Each step brought me closer to something I wanted to do—and something I was afraid to find out about myself. I had not sparred competitively in more than 20 years. I knew who I had been as a fighter in my thirties. I had no idea who I would be on the mat at 54. Would my kicks go where I wanted them to go? Would I move quickly enough? Would I remember how to respond when someone came at me? Or would I discover that the fighter I remembered was someone I could no longer be? People sometimes ask whether I was nervous about my opponent. Honestly, that wasn't the part th...
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Making My Masters Degree Make Sense

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When I graduated from college, I did not know exactly what I was going to do next, but that uncertainty did not frighten me. College itself had been the milestone. It represented four years of growth from a teenager into a young man. I had developed independence, become a leader, and completed what everyone said was the next logical step toward establishing myself. There was also an assumption attached to earning a college degree: once you graduated, the world would open up. Even if you did not have a detailed plan, you had accomplished something significant. You were on your way. Graduate school felt different. The degree was supposed to change something By the time I completed my Master of Public Health in industrial hygiene, I was not entering the professional world without experience. I had already been working in safety and health. I believed the graduate degree would enhance that experience and immediately move my career to another level. In my mind, the degree would speak for it...
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