I was sitting in the good ol’ Edge office when I received the familiar *ding!* of an email in my inbox. I didn’t recognize the sender, but it was a Gannon email address, so it couldn’t be one of those spam bots. The message was from a student named Jessica Edmondson, who was working in the Marketing office under Mallory Hedlund. She asked me if I would be interested in representing Gannon University in a multimedia marketing project. The project, entitled “Gannon Family,” wanted to interview students about what being a part of the university means to them. It would involve snapping some photos and filming a testimonial about my time at GU. Oooooo!

I kid you not, the first thought in my head after I read the email was, Man, this would make an awesome Edge article. I emailed Jessica and Mallory back, scheduled a time to meet and prepped myself for the big screen (Okay, well, the project would premiere through a website, but whatever. You get the picture).

I arrived at the marketing department to meet with Mallory before the shoot. She had me fill out a consent form saying I was okay with the university filming me blah, blah, blah, blah. Right before I was about slap on the trusty John Hancock at the bottom of the page, I noticed I needed to fill answer some questions: 1) In one word, summarize what Gannon Family means to you, and 2) What mark do you want to leave on the university after your graduate?

Well, dang. How did I want my legacy to be remembered after I left Gannon? I always viewed myself as “the Weird OT Girl who Writes for Edge and has a Funny Twitter,” but something told me that wasn’t exactly the answer the marketing department had in mind.

I thought back to what I had wanted to accomplish when I first started writing for Edge four years ago as a freshman and all the work I’ve done  since that very first article. Ultimately, as my writing has grown through the years so have my goals. My time with Edge started just as a means to make some extra money while I was at school. Then, I realized as my posts kept on getting more hits that this could actually be more than just a job.

Going through the college acceptance process is scary, transitioning into college is scary, heck, even BEING in college is still scary sometimes. The goal of my career at Edge became to positively impact someone’s day through my writing. If I could make someone’s college experience a little less stressful, whether they’re reading my article about study tips or Erie attractions, that would be enough of an impact for me. Going further, if I could raise awareness about Gannon and the various programs offered here, like my beloved occupational therapy program, that would be the ultimate dream.

In the end, I probably ended up writing down some garbled hodgepodge that hopefully conveyed the above sentiments. In all honestly, the filming process was such a blur that I don’t really remember much of it. We were scheduled to film in the Edge office. Mallory and the crew set up lights, a microphone and camera, I blurted out some phrases that maybe resembled coherent thoughts, we snapped a few pictures and that was that.

While this post isn’t technically like my typical “Senior Moments” features, it made me realize I’ve accomplished something I’ve always wanted to do since freshmen year: positively impact the Gannon community. Without Edge, I don’t think I would have had so many amazing opportunities to act as a voice for students or the OT program.