Vox Populi:

Our meeting seemed fated. I was almost through my first year at Glassboro State College located in a South Jersey town known for its apple and peach orchards. There in quiet Glassboro, I took classes in Marketing and Public Relations with a couple of psychology classes tossed in for good measure. By the middle of  my first semester, I realized that I did not want to be a Communications major; I had only selected this major to please my father who worked in Public Relations. Before I was accepted at Glassboro, most of my conversations about college with Dad ended with my father’s advice: “You need a major that will land you a good job when you graduate.  No one hires English majors.” I loved literature and reading, and I loved expressing myself through writing, but I took my father’s advice–at least initially.  But, when it came time to sign up for new courses for the second semester, I signed up for my first English class– an American Literature course taught by Dr. Donahue. And I decided it would be wiser for me not to mention this to Dad.

There, in that classroom overlooking Bunce Quad and its apple trees, I was introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson, an iconic American writer and the leading voice of the Transcendentalist movement. Walking across the quad, on my way to my first class, my senses swooned at the sight and scent of blossoms capping the apple trees with billowing clouds. Pink and white petals perfumed the air and spiraled down on breezy days. Bees hummed in the canopies; birds nested there. Springtime transformed Glassboro’s campus into a picturesque diorama that rivaled the cherry blossoms of Washington, D.C.  What a romantic setting for my introduction to Emerson’s words! Eighteen years old and living apart from my parents and eleven siblings for the first time, I was ripe for new ideas, new ways of being.  While I already felt connected to the natural world, Emerson’s profound words, especially in his essays “Nature” and “Self-Reliance” soon ignited a fire in me. Before too long, I was smitten by the philosophies of this Bostonian author and orator. In fact, more than smitten: never in my life–either before or after my college years–had a work of writing so affected me.  I was transformed by Emerson’s words.

Go to link