Ever since I was young, I’ve loved words
My first word was kitty. One day, I pointed at my cat and said, “Kitty.” My parents tell me I haven’t stopped talking since.
When I was 3 or 4, I would stare at books,willing the words to make sense. Even before I could read, I was fascinated by the written word, by text on a page. It was fitting, then, that I would someday join The University of Alabama’s Honors College and become a journalist.
Since then, I have listened to students on this campus speak billions of words. Whenever someone walks by me, and I hear a snippet of their conversation, I listen for those words, whether they are eloquent or crass; each word spoken is beautiful to me. This love of words and the stories they form is what drove me to join the Mosaic staff. I wanted to tell the stories of those who surrounded me daily, and I wanted to write about the Honors College that had provided me with a home here in Alabama.
I began my term as editor-in-chief with two lofty goals in mind: I wanted to move Mosaic to a new, user-friendly website, and I wanted to print two magazines.
Mosaic has never printed two magazines in one year. With a new staff every semester comprised mostly of people who have never worked in the journalism world or on a magazine’s staff, it can be difficult to finish one magazine in a year, let alone two. That is one of our goals: to educate students of all backgrounds multimedia skills. My job as editor and the job of the Mosaic class is to push my staff to improve, to find new creative heights and to make this organization incredible. I believe we have done that this year.
At the start of the semester, I was struck by the diversity of my staff. We have students from all different backgrounds, states and majors. The Mosaic staff really is a mosaic; we bring all our skills and our ideas together to create something beautiful. And if our small staff is like a small mosaic, what about the rest of the Honors College?
We are a college of students from across the nation. We are students from different backgrounds, ethnicities and life situations, with different goals. Yet we come together to form one of the most prestigious and close-knit honors colleges in the country.
The Honors College is a place of growth and change. It is a place where every student can feel at home, with out exception. And that is what we wanted to convey with this magazine.
Mosaic is ever-changing, and I am thrilled to be editor at a time where we have so much we can do and so many incredible stories to tell. I hope this edition introduces you to things you’ve never thought about, things you didn’t even know the Honors College had to offer.
When the first Mosaic staff sat down to decide on a name for the magazine, they wanted it to be a publication for everyone in the Honors College. That’s where the name Mosaic stems from: all the diverse pieces of the college coming together to create something beautiful.
Read the online version or pick up a hard copy in Nott Hall or Ridgecrest South
