A Love Letter to North Dakota State University
When I arrived at North Dakota State in 2010, I could not wait to leave.
I wasn't there because I was dying to be a college student. I was there to get through it—to earn a degree, get to the real world, and start making money. Staying the course wasn't easy for me. There were plenty of moments between 2010 and 2014 when I questioned whether I even wanted to be there at all.
What I didn't expect was that NDSU would turn out to be exactly right for me. I studied public relations and advertising, and looking back, I can say with total certainty it was the best degree I could have chosen. I had a natural affinity for the work almost from the start, and NDSU gave me the room to explore it, to test what I was good at, what I liked, and what kind of career I actually wanted to build, instead of the one I thought I was supposed to want.
More than anything, NDSU taught me my own value. It taught me that I can do hard things. Not because of one dramatic turning point I can point back to, but because staying the course when I didn't want to, semester after semester, was its own kind of proof. I didn't know it at the time, but that stubborn persistence became something I've relied on ever since.
And then there was the community. NDSU football games have been part of my life since I was twelve years old, long before I was ever a student there. My husband is a Bison too, and even though our paths didn't cross there, we found each other carrying the same pride in this place.
Now we bring our son to games, and watching him grow up in Bison Nation with two parents who already loved it before they loved each other has a way of putting the last twelve years in perspective. The further I get from my time on campus, the more I understand how much that community actually gave me, not just school spirit, but a sense of belonging I didn't fully appreciate while I was living it.
I've also noticed something else as I've gotten further from campus: a lot of the people who inspire me most from my NDSU years are the ones who went out and built something of their own. That spirit is part of why I started Herd Alignment, my own communications consulting business, born out of the same willingness to bet on myself that NDSU first taught me I had. It felt right to name it something that nods back to where that confidence started.
I didn't love NDSU the way I love it now until I had some distance from it. That's probably how it should be.
The place that makes you doesn't always feel like it's making you while it's happening—sometimes you only recognize it once you're standing far enough away to see the whole shape of it.
That is why I care about NDSU. Not because I couldn't wait to leave, but because it turned out to be exactly the place I needed, and it's still shaping who I am, and who my son is becoming, more than a decade later.
— Madison Quamme, 2014
#LoveLettersToThePlacesThatMadeUs
