Shereka Littlejohn

I never thought I would attend N.C. Central University.

But when I decided to be an Eagle, my life changed forever.

As a freshman, I stayed below the radar— another nerdy Chan-cellor’s scholar attending the University for free.

Sophomore year was different. That year I stumbled into the Campus Echo with an editorial that would forever change people’s perceptions of me.

I found my inner, controversial journalistic self with my opinion piece about racist black instructors on campus.

The next summer I interned at the N.C. Department of Commerce, where I gained valuable experience in public relations. But something changed me the fall of junior year.

The young lady who saw Governor Mike Easley deliver a speech she wrote at the state capital in July, was, by late August, a troubled spirit afraid to leave her dorm room.

I quit the Campus Echo.

No one knew I had been sexually assaulted or that I was undergoing counseling.

Nevertheless, I kept my GPA up and I even interviewed for a summer internship at Duke.

Being the overachiever I am, I got the internship, even though I was still healing.

I started the internship happy to have a supervisor who looked like me. I was impressed by her poise, and I was ready to show her what I could do.

But it wasn’t so easy. On the second day of my internship, she told me I would never be successful and that I should have changed my major a long time ago.

She even told me that NCCU was wasting its money by providing me with a full scholarship.

For three weeks I endured her cursing me out on some days and treating me to lunch on others.

I had never envisioned an internship quite like that.

So I made a hard decision: I quit my internship in order to preserve my dignity.

V My internship supervisor was upset. She said that because of me, no one at Duke would ever hire an NCCU intern again and that I had disgraced every slave who had worked on Duke plantation.

But I stuck to my decision, because after the assault I had promised myself that I’d never again allow someone to lower my self-worth.

Shortly after I quit, I received a phone call from my internship supervisor’s boss at Duke, who apologized to me. I was reassured — for a little while.

When I started my senior year, I didn’t know my decision would become a topic of conversation. But once a week, I hear someone discussing my decision without even realizing they are talking about me.

They say I was unprepared, but I know differently.

A professor has even indirectly used me as an example of what not to do as an intern.

So as I prepare to graduate, I don’t know if I’m a proud Eagle or a disappointed one.

To most of my professors and peers, thank you.

But to those who judge me because I chose to love myself rather than to endure hatred, I leave you with some lines from my favorite Maya Angelou poem: “You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / You may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I’ll rise.”