Seyward Darby '07

Seyward Darby Greenville, North Carolina Major: English Minor: Political Science Certificate: Policy Journalism and Media Studies

Seyward Darby is a senior and a full-time student again, after three years of devoting herself to The Chronicle, the independent student daily newspaper produced by Duke students.

"I started the second week of freshman year," says Darby, a native of North Carolina. "I was really nervous, and I walked in and said, ‘I'd really like to write a story for you.' That's when I heard someone say, ‘You, come here.' It was the city/state editor, and she was thrilled to have someone from North Carolina working on those stories."

Her first story for the paper dealt with North Carolina's creation of emergency response teams in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Her story last year about one such team -- Duke doctors working with Katrina survivors in New Orleans -- required living in a ditch for two days. Her work on that piece earned her the Melcher Award, given annually by the Duke's DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism for the best article by an undergraduate.

As a sophomore, Darby was university editor and writing a lot. A year later, she was editor-in-chief when the lacrosse story and resulting media storm broke. "That's when your cell phone is on 24-hours-a-day," she recalls. In addition to heading up The Chronicle's coverage, she was interviewed by numerous news organizations and programs, including NPR and CNN's Larry King Live.

Now, she is "just" the editorial page managing editor, which leaves lots of time for studying the "healing power of poetry," her thesis topic, and thinking about next steps -- maybe graduate study in political science or development. Her thesis adviser is English professor George Gopen, whom she describes as a wonderful poet himself.

Darby says her ideal job would be to do international journalism as practiced by Thomas Friedman, the award-winning author and New York Times columnist. Friedman figured in her "all-time favorite week at Duke," she says. "That was when Friedman, my favorite columnist, spoke at Duke; Pat Conroy, my favorite author, spoke at UNC; and REM, my favorite band, played at Walnut Creek in Raleigh. I love college!" 

She's headed for a Peace Corps assignment next fall, probably in Eastern Europe, and is going through the paperwork and medical preparation stages. The Peace Corps idea stems from teaching fifth graders for several weeks in Thailand last summer. Her Benjamin Duke Scholarship -- an undergraduate merit award at Duke that covers full tuition -- requires service abroad and in North Carolina. She previously worked in a community development center at Winston-Salem State University, a historically black institution.

Her time in Thailand helped inspire her undergraduate thesis work. While there, her boyfriend, a Canadian working as a diving instructor on the Thai coast, died in his sleep.

She has dealt with his death in part through poetry, specifically poems that deal with bereavement and which draw the reader into a sense of communion with the writer.

Edna St. Vincent Millay's 14-line "Poem 5" is an example of the shared feeling of loss in which "I recognize that that is exactly how I feel."

Now she is headed for a Peace Corps assignment or a similar international service program next fall. "I loved being immersed in another culture. Being young and unconcerned with other things, I can't think of a better time to do this."