Hello Cal Baptist. I have known and loved you, lived and grown with you all my life. I owe my life to you, as my parents, Ann and David, met and got married here. My sisters and I were homeschooled from birth to college, and starting at age 14 I attended various colleges from Irvine Valley College to Bakersfield College to Riverside City College.

But CBU is my real love. It was refreshing to come to a Christ-centered school where I learned ancient languages important to the church (Koine Greek and Latin — I’ll have to do Hebrew and Aramaic on my own), and got to understand more about the Bible.

I met wonderful people in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature as an English major and Spanish minor. You helped cultivate my interest in languages, stories and culture that started as a child and expanded here.

As a commuter, Lancer Media Group has become my home on campus as the newsroom was where I would spend my time. I started freshman year as an assistant news editor and quickly became the Business & Tech editor, where I have stayed for three and a half years, filling several other roles at different times, including website administrator.

Misty, my sister, was very involved with LMG when she was here. She was an inspiration. Now she is living her dream with our dad as a reporter in Washington D.C. and I will join her with my mom when I graduate. The school year that I got to spend with both my sisters was wonderful and I loved to see the theater productions that my sister Brittany Anderson-Severi and her husband Josh were involved in.

I certainly did not expect the pandemic, and it interrupted some important things including my time as president of the Latin Club and Brittany’s graduation, but it helped me to learn adaptability in the digital age, which is valuable knowledge in this era.

This has been a busy semester as the secretary of the Spanish club, being inducted into the Spanish Honor Society and being vice president of the English Honor Society. I also presented a paper at the convention for the English Honor Society after presenting poetry at the Distinguished Public Lecture and my capstone at the Arts & Letters Symposium. My internship digitizing the P. Boyd Smith Hymnology Collection in the Annie Gabriel Library has helped me realize my love for preserving history and making it accessible to anyone who wants to learn.

Thank you, CBU, LMG and The Banner. Without you, I would not have gotten to know this campus as deeply. I have interviewed some pretty amazing people because of you and I will always appreciate that.