After a bit of soul-searching and revelation, I’ve decided I want to start a new tradition where I pick a photo from the past year that is the most meaningful for me and give the dear readers an insight as to why it’s the one that reigns supreme.
For Katie, I had to cheat a little and go back into 2023 for this picture of her perched on Campbell’s camel statue that sits outside the basketball arena.
For the longest time, I thought this particular dromedary (that’s a one hump camel as opposed to a Bactrian camel which has two humps…the more you know!) was named “Clarence” (after Clarence Oddbody, the angel second class from “It’s A Wonderful Life” who eventually gets his wings after saving George Bailey).
Look at that face! He just looks like an honest-to-goodness Clarence to me.
It turns out that his name is actually “Gaylord” after a prominent family of benefactors to the university.
That’s OK…I’ll still think of him as Clarence every time I see him when I go to see my favourite Camel amongst the “nobodies from nowhere” that inhabit Buies Creek.
Katie’s been through so much in this last year that it’s hard to imagine how she’s not gone completely mental. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the universe with some of the personalities she’s had to manage over that time.
She had started her first job during the first half of her senior year in high school working at the Starbucks in the White Oak Target and would also end up working at the Starbucks in Wiggins Hall on campus once she arrived for classes. Some of the tales she would relate of her more “interesting” co-workers would be a psychologist’s dream of a patient but in spite of the occasional absurdity and drama that would swirl round her, the vast majority of them seemed to really like her if not confide in her whether she really wanted it or not!
Even with all of the excitement in the workplace, she still tended to her studies at Enloe pretty much all on her own and before we knew it, she was marching through the queue to accept her diploma at her graduation in the convention centre downtown.
But there was no rest for this Eagle who was soon to gain her hump down at the Creek…she’d expand her skills beyond the Starbucks and scrounge as many hours at work as she could get away with and before we knew it, she was already off to orientation where she’d meet her roommate in the dorm room they would share…yet another new experience.
Yeah, a new experience for all of us who were used to having her round much more conveniently than a 45 minute one-way trip along the back roads to the south!
But she made this massive transition to college life that normally throws most new graduates for a loop look pretty darned effortless. Between her working and attending to her studies and learning that tenured college professors are a whole different (and occasionally weirder!) animal than the teachers she’d been used to in the public school systems, she managed to find time to enjoy some campus events.
Most importantly, she learned to cherish her new freedom and independence and still rocked her first semester’s grades at university.
She handled that transition to college way better than I did some thirty years ago!
It’s as if she’d been at Campbell for years rather than coming to college for the first time.
You could see it after the street fair before her classes really started for the semester when we were heading back toward Raleigh and there was Katie walking the other way toward her dorm as if she owned the place and had been there for years.
In that moment (through some tears), I couldn’t have been prouder of what she’s overcome through the year and the grace with which she has done so whilst fully being in the embrace of the camel.
And that’s why I picked this particular photo…
