For those of you that do not know me personally, my name is Joshua Shelor. I have spent the last two years working for the office of Parent and Family Programs. I have been here to see the office move from Institutional Advancement into Student Life, and have seen three wonderfully strong women take the role of Director for this program. All that being said, I am set to graduate on Sunday, and as excited as I am for certain things, I will dearly miss the experiences I have had here.
My relationship with this office started by chance. I met Mandy Darnell, then the Director of Parent and Family Programs, at Family Weekend 2014. At the time, I was serving on the committee for Family Weekend, and she and I got to talking while working in the Welcome Center. Six months later, I get an email from her offering me this job. Her student worker at the time was graduating, and she remembered me all the way back from December. My first day at work was on Graduation Day for the class of 2015.
After that first meeting, I continued to share my passion for Emerson with not only my peers, but with their families (that’s you). I went on to be the Chair of Family Weekend 2016, and I have had the pleasure of working with some of the best staff Emerson has to offer. In Parent and Family Programs alone, I got to work with Ms. Darnell, as well as her Interim successor Jane Nunes, and then I had the pleasure to help hire our reigning leader, Maureen Hurley.
As I move onto to my future, I am full of both fear and excitement. As it stands, I will continue living in Boston, but I am still on the hunt for my first post-grad employer. Although I do not know what my next step will be, I know that Emerson has prepared me to take on the world. Even just this morning, I was reminded that a lot of my classmates and colleagues are in the same boat. I ran into Emerson’s Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, Sylvia Spears, in the elevator, and as I got off, she said to me: “just remember, the life is not the work”.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for teaching me so much, and I hope that, come graduation day, your student will be as happy with their Emerson experience as I have been with mine.
Note: All of us in Campus Life thank Josh for his unmatched wit, sass, and intellect. We will miss you!
Be the first to reply