Melanie Godinez-Cedillo ’22: Supporting future impact and promise
This is Melanie Godinez-Cedillo, a recent graduate of the Morehead-Cain Class of 2022 and one of the scholar directors on the Fund Board.
Oh boy, has our Carolina experience been a ride.
My time at Carolina as a Morehead-Cain Scholar has been a life-changing experience, largely due to the support and love of the Foundation staff, and because of my brilliant scholar peers. I will forever cherish the memories of sharing stories of our “near-death” Outward Bound/NOLS experiences during the first-year picnic, the many stressed head nods we shared in the scholar lounge, and the feeling of being proud when I find out that one of my classmates won an award or is leading an organization.
The Morehead-Cain class of 2022 has just graduated from Carolina . . . and oh boy, has it been a ride. As a cohort, we have faced a tumultuous four years. The day before our first day of class in 2018, many of us left the sunset serenade to see or hear the fall of Silent Sam. On top of navigating our own adjustments to campus, our academics, and our social lives, we watched our University navigate a turbulent and challenging chapter in its history.
The COVID-19 pandemic sent us home during our second year with no clue how or when we would see each other again. After spending the summer under severe lockdowns and adjusting to the “new normal,” we were met with a full year of virtual learning for our junior year. We spent more than 18 months of our lives apart, with no in-person programming to share our passions, jokes, or late-night meals with one other. We grew up and grew apart as my class continued to champion the journey.
As the world continued to adapt to and face the impacts of the pandemic, the class of 2022 stepped back on campus as seniors—as different people whose lives did not go as we had planned them (and I’m SURE as many had planned) four years ago in our high school classrooms. We saw each other again for the first time in over a year—sharing thesis topics and start-up ideas, as well as the love and losses we had experienced.
It has been a crazed ride for the class of 2022. We had much more dividing us than uniting us, so when it was time to initiate the Senior Class Campaign, I thought, how am I going to get all these people together?
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Morehead-Cains 1) are always willing to help and 2) don’t back down from a challenge. I am grateful that my class of 70+ scholars, who come from diverse backgrounds, was willing to come together to make sure we hit that 100 percent participation goal.
Not only did we meet that goal, but we set a record. By the end of Morehead-Cain’s annual Day of Giving campaign, my entire scholar class had made a gift to the Foundation. What a moment of unity. A showcase of our appreciation for the Program that helped us become the people we are today. While we are not yet the CEOs, lawyers, doctors, journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners, or renowned academics we one day hope to be, seeing my peers give so willingly reminded me of how the Morehead-Cain Program is driven by community.
As I head into my final days as a Morehead-Cain Scholar and enter the world as an alum of this Program, I challenge every class of Morehead-Cains to follow the lead of the class of 2022. Through it all, we were able to spare some of our tight college budgets to support the very Program that allowed us to explore our passions and that changed our lives.
I give to support the life-changing journey of future scholars because I wish everyone could experience what I have these past four years. Let us all work together to give back.
Make a gift to the Morehead-Cain Annual Fund.
—Melanie Godinez-Cedillo ’22