How’s it going, Eagles?

Over the course of my adult life, I’ve made some astoundingly terrible choices. Choices that, without going into too much detail, have made graduating college a very long and very difficult process. Mistakes were made in an impressive variety of ways, each one more creative than the last.

But if I hadn’t made those mistakes, I would never have been in the position to make two of the greatest choices I’ve ever made in my life.

The first choice was coming to Armstrong.

Let me paint you a picture: We’re mid-pandemic. Duncan is sitting in his room alone with gross long hair, an even grosser beard and a sore body from working all day in a hot warehouse. Moments like these can provide clarity. Sometimes, you look around you and decide that things need to change.

I thought that it would be nice to be on a college campus again. I was enrolled in online classes, but I wanted to feel like a student. Like I was part of a community. I wanted to get out of that room, out of that warehouse, and feel like I was part of something greater.

So I applied to Georgia State’s film program and got accepted pretty quickly. I was preparing to move to Atlanta and make the change official, but something inside me told me that I shouldn’t leave Savannah quite yet. So I looked at degree programs that were closer to home, and found that Georgia Southern was offering a Communication Studies degree right here in Savannah. The rest, as they say, is history.

I’ll be real with you. I wouldn’t have come here if the name, “Georgia Southern” wasn’t attributed to this campus. But almost immediately after I arrived I realized that there was something special about this campus that cannot be attributed to it being a part of the Georgia Southern system.

This place is Armstrong. Let me say it again. This is Armstrong.

This is the weird campus. This is the place for the outliers. This is the place where you find green hair, septum piercings, tattoos, anime clubs, improv troupes, dead roaches with word bubbles, and philosophy professors that play electric ukulele.

This is also where you find the Inkwell. That leads me to the other best decision I’ve made.

I remember being frustrated about lots of things and not having an outlet to express myself through writing. I knew there had to be a campus paper at Armstrong, so I did some digging. The Inkwell was… surprisingly hard to find.

Still, I found an email address, asked if they needed any help, and after a lot of waiting, I finally got a response. A little online training later, and I was an official contributor to a college paper. I was a student journalist.

But again, I’ll be real with you. The Inkwell was in rough shape. The pandemic wasn’t kind to any student-led organization, and the Inkwell was no exception. Combined with the fact that consolidation had forced the Inkwell to fold into Georgia Southern’s George-Anne Media Group, there was a real chance that this paper would have died.

I didn’t want it to. I stuck with it. I wrote music reviews and handed out papers. Eventually, I was promoted to Editor-in-Chief (more or less by default due to lack of staff) and Rebecca Munday (who is an actual force of nature) and I got to work turning the Inkwell into a news source that we would want to read.

Eventually, by some miracle, Jabari Gibbs came along for the ride. Jabari’s contributions have been immeasurable. He was the perfect replacement for Rebecca after she graduated, and he and I somehow were able to recruit an entire team of incredibly talented writers and content creators.

Amir Alexander (Arts and Entertainment Editor) is my favorite headache I’ve ever had.

Emmie Roper (Managing Editor) is a perfect prescription for that headache.

Terrell Jackson Jr. (staff writer and audiovisual prodigy) constantly has ideas that I wish I could come up with.

Gabby Reilly (staff writer and improv extraordinaire) is probably going to be my boss one day.

Ainslie Smith (staff writer and the office’s spirit animal) doubles as an excellent writer and a living, breathing vibe check.

Those are my peeps that I get to see every week. I also have to give a shoutout to Samantha Farrington, Peacefulove Alaji, Kylie Martin, and Megan Glass for their various contributions as well.

I look around my office and see a team that is greater than its parts. I see a community of people who support each other.

They’ve laughed at my jokes. They’ve forgiven me for being a jerk. They threw me a damn surprise lūʻau.

They kept the Inkwell alive. They made it so that I can leave this paper better than how I found it. That’s all I could ever ask for.

And on that note, I only have one final message to leave you with:

Listen to Frightened Rabbit. They’re the best band ever.

Duncan out! *Drops mic.*