Edit desk: Newly colored leaves

Emily Thampoe

Since my early teenage years, I’ve been obsessed with the ‘90s sitcom, “Friends”. There is something special about the genuine connections the characters share, even when some of the situations they’re put in are so outlandish.

At this time in my life, the opening line of the show’s theme song – “So no one told you life was gonna be this way” – strikes a cord with me. 

As a new school year begins, I am at a place in life I never would have planned or envisioned for myself.

When I was 14 years old and deciding which high school to go to, I took an entrance exam and interviewed at the school where I would eventually spend four years of my life.

During the interview, I was understandably nervous. The school I was interviewing for was an all-girls, Catholic high school, which would be quite different than what I was used to at public schools for nine years running.

It came to a point in the interview where the director of admissions decided to discuss my entrance exam scores with me and my parents.

She looked at the scores, smiled and laughed gently. We talked about how one subject area’s score was noticeably higher than the rest: English. Reading and writing were activities I had always enjoyed, simply for the joy of doing them.

Never did I think I could do something I quietly loved and make a living out of it.

Since I was young, I had aspirations to go into science, a field that amazed me beyond explanation. Science, especially biology, made me think about the world in an analytical way. I was always thinking about why things work the way they do and why things are the way they are.

This type of thinking has not ceased, but has deepened.

When I started at Lehigh, I was more than ready to get to work and learn more about the field of biology, and maybe do some research in a lab. But as time went by, it came to my attention that I might not want this science dream as much as I had made myself believe I did.

After all, the spurts of writing I did throughout my first semesters on South Mountain brought me inexplicable joy. I was warm and I felt enriched, and there was a bit of inspiration in me.

With nerves pulsating from the tips of my fingers to the jointed crevices of my body, I traded in my lab coat for pen and paper, I exchanged my goggles for computer keys and swapped out my long lasting public love for all things biological for a new love of telling real stories about real events and people.

At first I did not want change. All I wanted to do with change was throw it out my dorm room window and hope it wouldn’t return. But I soon realized there wasn’t anything to be afraid of.

This summer allowed me to do research and talk to civilians and professionals, all in an effort to publish stories about timely world issues.

My entry into journalism might have been a bit out of the ordinary – working at the United Nations – but it was valuable all the same. I was learning on the job, but I learned a great amount and I will be forever grateful for that.

My nerves have subsided greatly. They are still lurking in the corners of my brain, but I feel more ready and excited to take on this new journey.

Each day I eagerly pack my heavily stickered MacBook Pro, my AP stylebook and my other course materials into my backpack and I get moving.

Just as fall brings newly colored leaves, the season brings a new adventure for me, too. I have stories to tell and new ideas and things to learn. It’s time to let things prosper naturally and grow with the changes as they come.

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Emily Thampoe, ’21, is an assistant lifestyle editor for The Brown and White. She can be reached at [email protected].