By Vasily Stokes
Editor-In-Chief
The night I was writing this; I decided to make some scrambled eggs as I had not eaten anything but Ramen earlier that day. I like my eggs super runny and fluffy, so I usually add cheese and milk while scrambling them before putting them into the pan. However, I realized after digging through the fridge that no one had gotten any milk, and the only substitute I could find was my mom’s vanilla coffee creamer. So, I added it into my eggs for the first time, and with a ton of salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, the scrambled eggs somehow came out tasting like waffles. So, while I am approaching the end of my time at Volunteer State Community College, it became that the best way I can describe my time here is that I made my eggs taste like waffles.
I started at Vol State knowing two major things about myself. I enjoy creative writing, and my brain is well-suited to understanding and connecting political and historical events, which I also find fascinating to discuss. I discovered my love for creative writing in high school in my creative writing class, in which I was writing short stories that heavily included historical and political themes relevant to the setting of my stories. How I discovered my interest in history was through watching the History Channel with my grandmother late at night, which was just watching the history, turned into playing historical video games and watching historical videos on YouTube, often the ones of an animated nature. This interest in historical media eventually turned into giving much of my time towards researching history on my own (as often these types of media forget to include many needed citations to their claims). Knowing this much about history and politics became normalized for me, and finding out how much people don’t know compared to me growing up was surprising. It became an issue of people who would just assume that I am well knowledgeable in all areas of education and was as well performing in all subjects in school. But this wasn’t true; it’s just that my brain works best by connecting things to history.
Because of my prior academic and personal struggles, I chose to go to Vol State over MTSU or TSU as I felt unprepared for university academically, financially, and emotionally at that time. I was even attempting to just do online classes; a choice I am thankful I never acted out on as I would not have been able to solve my problems well over a computer screen. The only idea I knew I had for my future was that I knew I wanted to help people. Now I am not someone who is extremely helpful in a very stressful environment, and I wanted to use the skills I knew I was good at and could use to help people, but I also knew I needed to improve on. My communication skills were something I could use, but also something that needed to be improved upon. So, I chose to be a communication major, then transfer to MTSU after two years at Vol State and get a history minor. Now this plan hasn’t fully changed with Vol State. I changed my major to Journalism, and I found a group of people to open myself up to.
I changed my major to Journalism after meeting Professor Allen Babiarz-Lira, who had started working at Vol State the same semester as I started being a student, and through taking his Media Writing course I realized that the best way to use my skills to help people was through combining my interest in creative writing and my love and natural ability in understanding history and political science. Through him, I discovered my passion for journalism and media writing and became Editor-In-Chief of the Vol State Student Newspaper as Prof. Allen was put in charge of the newspaper’s relaunch and eventual brand image change. Prof. Allen has been a huge influence in a lot of my future career decisions since meeting him, and through him I believe a major mistake a lot of students make with their time at Vol State is that they do not build bonds and relationships with faculty and staff. Something I have learned is that most issues people encounter like graduation, schedule conflicts, and financial aid issues are all issues that can be solved if you have someone in the faculty that can talk you through it or find someone to directly talk about this issue instead of getting bounced around by bureaucratic offices.
Another change in my plan is that I didn’t think I would be transferring to MTSU with a group of people I cared for. Another major issue that I think a lot of Vol State students miss out on is being part of a community and building friendships with other students. This can often be done through talking to people in your classes and breaking down the barrier of only speaking when you need to ask for a writing utensil or for a group assignment and simply staying on campus after your classes, joining clubs, and doing other extracurricular activities that make you socially attractable. Like playing a game of chess with people in the library or attending an Arts & Crafts day in the printmaking room. Vol State, as a two-year college, makes it seem like you cannot establish long lasting friendships with people, but this is very untrue. I met my friends because I saw a group of people who seemed interested in playing a card game that I played as a kid called Magic: The Gathering. Through this card game, I was able to find a group of people that I could be close to, and through them, emotionally prepare myself for transferring to a university and actually attempt to establish my life. As I proceed with graduating, my only advice to future students is to network and actually build a relationship with your peers and instructors at Vol State. These relationships and connections can do their best to carry you through your time at Vol State and help build your future at whichever institution and for your career. There is no promise that these relationships will fundamentally change your life and your goals, but they might tweak them enough so that you can find what you want to do. They might make your eggs taste like waffles.
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