On Aug. 23, Elizabethtown College held the Convocation Ceremony to welcome the first-year students. Director of Community Affairs and College Special Events Caroline Lalvani was in charge of Convocation this year.
This year, the event featured a Student Poet Laureate for the first time. Senior education major Ingrid Peura presented a poem titled “Home” but changed it to “A Tribute to FYS S” to make it about the first-year students.
“I was excited and nervous, as I’ve never done something like this before,” Peura said.
Peura’s poem centers around the feelings and experiences of being a first-year student. She does this by recalling her own experiences as a first-year student. In the poem, she discusses how the summer before arriving at College is exciting.
Then, Peura explained how it begins to feel like anxiety. The thought of going to college becomes overwhelming and makes you think it will be too much to handle, as it was in her case.
She also tells how anxiety comes from the thought of being unable to make friends or feel smart enough. However, those feelings eventually flee, and it feels like home. In her case, she met so many new people quickly and felt like she belonged at Etown.
Peura chose to present “Home” to encourage the first-year students to avoid feeling weighted by the negative feelings of going to College. It made her feel good to share it.
“I felt pride in myself and all of the incoming students,” Peura said.
She was especially impressed at how the incoming students made it to college despite societal issues such as COVID-19 and other dysfunctions they faced.
Aside from the pride she received from reading it, Peura also exerted much effort into her poem. She spent a week writing it, most of which consisted of rewriting and revision. During this, she aimed for something that would sound moving to the first-year students.
“I struggled with the tone of the poem for a while… I didn’t want it to be too sad, but I still wanted the melancholy and nostalgic feel,” Peura said.
After Peura’s poem, the first-year students are sure to feel inspired and ready to take on the new adventure that is college.
