By: Raya Brashear-Evans
I keep secrets. Not my own. I don’t have my own. I don’t have me. I have you and everyone else. I collect secrets on postcards, in margins, on napkins, in notebooks. And everyone wonders where I find these things, why they tell me. (Maybe I have kind eyes.)(Maybe you feel the comfort in knowing me for years.)(Maybe you feel the ineffectuality of knowing me for a day.) Maybe its because I’ve sewn my mouth shut and made the executive decision to become the world’s ears. Because everyone needs someone to listen. To listen to the screaming whispers of secrets found between the pages of books and on the rims of coffee cups.
–Emily Witkowski
These words flow from the mind and through the lips of Emily Witkowski, a senior English major with a minor in Interactive Multimedia who has been taking TCNJ by storm. She’s been able to balance being captain of the Women’s Club Soccer team, Treasurer of Sigma Tau Delta, an on campus IT job, and her academic studies.
“The more you have, the easier it is to make time for it. You have to schedule yourself,” humors Emily when asked how she manages being involved in all these extracurricular activities.
A native of Woodbridge, New Jersey, she spent the years of her high school career emulating her older brother who is a current high school English teacher in South Brunswick.
“He played soccer, I played soccer. He joined choir, I joined choir,” said Emily.
She is no stranger to living a busy life; all through high school Emily immersed herself in everything she could get her hands on.
“I was just as active as I am now. I was in all the audition choirs in high school, I played the violin growing up, and I played soccer and basketball,” described Emily.
She’s always found interest in English and History classes, they allowed her to flex her reading and writing muscles and create truly inspiring pieces of work. Originally Emily was an English Secondary Education major but soon dropped her Education component, deciding that teaching wasn’t something she wanted to do.
Emily has also had the opportunity to travel aboard to England and spend a trimester at Oxford University, enriching her mind in contemporary poetry and Shakespearean literature. She often spent hours in the library reading information on various topics and loved every minute of it. She describes it as being a “valuable learning experience” and is truly grateful for the travel opportunity.
Even though it’s her senior year, Emily still remains very active within TCNJ. She along with the other members of Sigma Tau Delta ventured to the beautiful city of Portland, OR to attend a conference and present individual pieces of work.
“Our chapter of Sigma Tau Delta was really well represented at the conference. I lost count of how many faculty advisers from universities all over the country mentioned how many TCNJ students they ran into once I told them where I was from,” she says, “We were referenced as having our own little army there.”
Emily presented her paper on Alice Oswald’s “A Sleepwalk on the Severn” which focused on a cultural phenomenon unique to the River Severn in England. She is extremely proud of the members of her chapter who won awards and views it as a reflection on all the hard work students put into their writing here at TCNJ.
The English Department at TCNJ has greatly supported Emily through all of her success; she describes having good relations with most of the professors, even the ones that haven’t taught her.
“I really love the English department here, everyone is warm and welcoming. Bliss Hall is such a cozy little spot and all the professors are friendly.”
After graduation Emily plans to earn her Masters degree in Library Science at either Rutgers University or Pratt Institute with hopes of becoming a librarian. “I always love to read and always got along with my school librarians, even since elementary school,” Emily says. Despite what you’ve previously heard the age of the library is not dead, that passion still burns brightly within Emily and will continue to do so for many years to come.