Jade

Cascade Valley Metro Park, Akron OH

May 2026

I met Jade through the University of Akron's School of Education, where she works as a student ambassador, her role is one where she gets to talk to prospective students before they ever set foot on campus. She's a senior now, headed toward teaching, though she's quick to say she doesn't want to be a typical one. She's thinking about a few years in a general classroom, then maybe a master's in teaching English abroad. She spent time in Thailand once and hasn't stopped thinking about going back.

Jade isn't originally from Akron, and she'll tell you she's still finding her way around. This stretch of trail came from a friend, not her own discovery, one from a group chat. She spent most of her freshman year keeping to herself before she started saying yes to things: clubs, the ambassador program, walks like this one. The friendships that came out of it are, in her words, the thing she values most about the university.

She grew up without much unstructured outdoor time, more playgrounds than woods, and she notices the difference now. A trail like this, she says, is real nature, somewhere that hasn't had much human impact. She doesn't swim and won't go near the water for long, but she'll sit at the edge of it with a camera, taking pictures the way she always has, partly to remember what a place actually looked like, partly because a photo, once posted, tends to start a conversation about where it was taken.