L etter from the Editor

Olivia Neale Kerr, 2022-2023 Mellon Intern

How can one compile what appears to be a simple magazine to encapsulate an entire year of Mellon Mays? I found it incredibly difficult. There is so much to say, and there is so much emotion behind what can be said.

As I reflect on the final year of my undergraduate education, I cannot help but feel a multitude of emotions: nostalgia, happiness, sadness, and pride. Pride is a tricky emotion to have—it has the capacity to vanish in a brief moment or morph into arrogance. It is hard sometimes to find pride in what one accomplishes as an individual with multiple intersecting identities in a world built on the oppression of the marginalized. What does it mean to be proud? Must it always be present when one does something in particular, or can it be an ever-present essence and emotion that one can feel deep within themselves? I prefer to imagine the latter.

Through my experience in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, I realized that one cannot navigate an academic career alone. Forging bonds with the different cohorts I had the honor of sharing such a comforting, welcoming space with my junior and senior years, I found community. The ever-looming feeling of impostor syndrome never goes away, but in Mellon Seminar I felt like I found a place in which I felt like I belonged. I have always struggled with the feeling of belonging as a Black queer femme attending PWIs for the entirety of my schooling. However, Mellon seminar was a reprieve—it provided a space in which I could rest, breathe, and, most importantly: dream.

It is not easy to imagine a world outside of the one we live in—one full of pain and suffering regarding widespread institutionalized oppression. Systems of oppression manifest themselves in academia—marginalizing different areas of study and those who study them. However, as burgeoning scholars, I believe it to be our duty to practice radical imagination. Thank you to all who have guided me on my academic and personal journey as I pursue my dreams.

My advice to all: Rest. Breathe. Imagine. Dream.