TKC Letters Project - Life-Changing Love

I came to The King’s College hoping to change the world,

and I left with my world changed. I could wax eloquent about my classes, assignments, and readings that challenged my ideas, shaped my thinking, and made me better. It all pales in comparison to the people I met who loved me with life-changing love.

I remember sitting in a professor’s office with no agenda besides verbally processing my entire personal life. I remember eating fresh-baked bread with the Muellers after a week of only eating microwavable meals. I remember a professor learning I was going through a hard time and making a point to find me and check in with me every once in a while, even when I didn’t have a class with him that semester. I remember moving time zones away from my family and being welcomed into the families of my faculty. I never felt left behind.

I remember experiencing profound Christian friendship for the first time in my life. I met women who saw the messiest parts of me and didn’t turn away, instead choosing to speak truth and encouragement over me. I remember a November hike shared with my dearest sisters and realizing, “These people love me like Jesus, and I understand God better for them.” I remember attending Refuge with them, praying before our macroeconomics final, and being excited for every day’s challenges that I got to face with them. I remember when my King’s community rallied around me and cheered their lungs out when I was baptized in the middle of the night in Central Park lake one January.

I remember Settlers of Catan tournaments, Lord of the Rings marathons, debates about who was the greatest statesman (it’s King Alfred the Great), the nerves before Interregnum debates, the sprained ankle after Powder Puff. I can finally come clean and say I was the one who initiated mattress surfing in Albee (I am so sorry, Student Life staff). The hardest times just look fun because they were filled with so much love and joy. King’s was full of the best, most-loving people I had ever met, and I was the luckiest girl in the world to meet them.

And then the miraculous thing happened — it just didn’t stop. The people who loved me at King’s loved me when I went home for Covid, then took a remote semester, then lived off campus with non-Kingsians, then moved abroad, then moved to DC. At King’s, I met life-changing love that has not stopped changing my life. I am a stronger Christian, woman, and academic simply because I was loved so well. I love you, TKC.