05/16/19
Morgan and four other graduating seniors were asked to speak to the same set of questions about their college careers. The transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for form and concision.

Morgan Schremmer, Hays, a 2012 graduate of Victoria High School, is graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English (writing).

Who was Morgan Schremmer when she first came to Fort Hays State? What was she like?

She was a wallflower. I was quiet and shy, and not very outspoken, kind of content just to kind of be. I didn't really have a whole lot of ideas about what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be. I was just kind of there.

Who is Morgan now? What changed?

The exact opposite. I am loud, and I am outspoken, and I am fun, creative and everything that I ever wanted to be.

Who and what helped her become the person she is now?

Credit where credit is due. I found four absolutely beautiful best friends, freshman and sophomore year. Without them I would not be who I am today. They took me out of my comfort zone. They took me to events and introduced me to their friends. And then all of a sudden I went from just my roommate as my friend to knowing half of campus, almost the entirety of the Greek community. So my four best friends, who I'm still best friends with all these years later, are the biggest part of why I am the way that I am today. And then the English Department. Finding my love for English and being part of the department felt like coming home. Like, I felt like I belonged in a way that I didn't feel like I belonged in any of the other majors that I had before. I picked English.

I started touring colleges for performing arts, singing. I trained; I did singing like all throughout middle school and high school. So I started with that. And then I went to the Art Department, but drawing, painting just didn't feel right. And then I started taking some English classes as the humanities credits, and I fell in love. I'd always been a reader and just like to write, just random stuff.

The very first class that I took in the English Department was with Brenda Craven, and she and Dr. Duffy are the two teachers that I credit with my love for the English department. Brenda and Cheryl Duffy are the two that made me love English Department as much as they do. They were welcoming, not that other teachers hadn't been welcoming, it was just a different level, a more encompassing level of welcoming, and then they were both just so enthusiastic about what they were teaching that it made me enthusiastic about it too.

I am looking to work in public relations, or marketing – kind of writing for a specific audience for a company. I'm doing an internship, a writing internship class right now, for a company that's based in D.C. It’s a brand new company startup called clean pitching protection systems. It's a baseball software to correct pitching technique. Really, it's a very unique product. There's nothing nothing like it on the market right now. It's online education combined with hands-on training to create the mechanics of throwing so that pitchers don't hurt themselves while they're throwing. So they were brand new, and they didn't really know what they needed. They just knew they needed someone. And so I've done infographics, fact sheets, research, Web design – I've kind of touched on a little bit of everything. And so that part of the public relations, the writing for them, for their audience to get their product out there, I really enjoyed doing that. So that's kind of I'd like to do something similar to that combine the design experience that I have, for my art minor with the writing that I've learned with my major.

What else would you like to say?
How long it took: seven years, and all that matters is that you get it done. That was something that I struggled with, because my friends graduated and left and went on to do other things. And I was still here trying to finish school. My parents were really supportive, that it took me seven years to finish school since 2012. You just have to persevere. And that's the biggest thing that I've learned from Fort Hays – you’ve just got to keep on trucking.