Macketta Johns. Remember that name.
Johns aspires to be the Oprah Winfrey of her generation and talk to all kinds of people about all kinds of things, especially anything to do with arts and entertainment.
She does exactly that on HPU Radio every Monday. For two hours, she and her friend Monasia Baker dish on anything to do with pop culture on their two-hour show “Do Tell.”
But there’s more to Johns than the gift of gab behind a microphone.
She’s a Presidential Scholar, a member of HPU’s Honor Scholar Program and a junior broadcasting major. She’s made the dean’s list every semester — except when she was 16 time zones away studying abroad last year in Australia.
She’s also the president of the Campus Activities Team, the HPU organization that infuses the fun and the insightful into campus life. Johns has been involved since she was a freshman.
Johns has been selected as HPU’s Extraordinary Leader for March.
There was a time she didn’t feel extraordinary at all. She felt alone.
‘I’m Not Just Another Face’
When Johns arrived at HPU, she was homesick.
She really had never lived in another place other than Frederick, Maryland, her hometown. She was an only child, raised by a single mother. Her mom, Miatta Johns, an underwriter, raised her daughter to be strong-willed and faith-driven.
Johns was. She didn’t know anyone at HPU when she arrived. She came anyway. She loved what she saw inside the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication. When she spotted the TV studio, she saw her future. Her dream became real.
And yet, she missed home terribly. In stepped Scott Wojciechowski, HPU’s director of first-year education. He helped. But so did so many other people. Johns realized the best way to deal with her homesickness was to get involved.
She joined the Campus Activities Team and its Executive Council the second semester of her freshman year. She later became the organization’s vice president of membership, then the vice president and now the president.
She now works with other freshmen missing home and tells them her story. Always, she mentions what HPU did for her.
“I’m not just another face, another number,” she says. “They actually care.”
And it starts, she says, with HPU President Nido Qubein.
“The fact that he walks around campus and greets students like family means so much to me,” she wrote in her Extraordinary Leader essay. “Going away far from home can be hard, but when you genuinely feel like your university is your home away from home, it is the best feeling.”
When Johns studied abroad for five months last year at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia, she received Facebook messages from her HPU professors and staff members.
They wrote they missed her, and to a once homesick freshman, those messages meant much.
But so did Australia.
Lessons From The Other Side of the World
By January of her freshman year, Johns felt emboldened.
She felt comfortable at HPU, and she felt comfortable walking into the Study Abroad office and saying, “I want to go to Australia.”
She first fell in love with the country by watching “Dance Academy,” a teen-oriented TV drama based in Australia. Plus, Johns had also taken dance for seven years.
Johns’ wish to go to Australia came true last year.
From July to November, she studied at Charles Sturt University and took courses in event management, ethics, history and journalism.
She lived with 40 other students. They were all Australian – except her. They did much together. But Johns did much by herself. That included five different waterfalls in an Australian rain forest in one day.
“I never enjoyed being alone – I am an only child – but I enjoyed being by myself because it was a good time for self-reflection, and I felt this hunger, this drive to go after my career like no other time in my life.
“Sometimes, I’ve doubted myself and asked, “How am I going to be an entertainment broadcaster? How can I be my generation’s Oprah?’ But after traveling to the other side of the world, I felt like I could do anything.”
HPU: A Student’s Second Family
Summer Chandler, HPU’s director of student activities, knows Johns well.
She’s worked with Johns since she was a freshman. So, Chandler knows Johns will drop by her office at any moment to sit and talk – or even lie on the floor using a beanbag for a pillow and a sofa as a footstool.
Then, the two will discuss about what to bring to campus next.
Like a spoken-word poet from Atlanta.
Johns saw Ashlee Haze at the National Association of Campus Activities conference in October 2016, and Johns knew Haze could attract a crowd on campus. Chandler wasn’t so sure.
But Johns believed in it so much she promoted the event on every social media outlet she could. In February 2017, when Haze performed at HPU’s Extraordinaire Cinema, 60 people came.
“If there is one word I have for Macketta, it is passionate,” Chandler says. “If there is something she really wants to do, she’ll make it happen. She’ll make her own path.”
Her mom and her maternal grandmother, Mabel Mawolo, taught Johns to be strong. But she says HPU taught her to believe.
And she does. This summer, Johns will move to Los Angeles for a three-month internship with AfterBuzz TV, an online broadcast network with more than 20 million weekly downloads of its various podcasts.
HPU helped make that happen.
“High Point University is like the family you want to come back to,” she says. “I was so excited to study abroad. But I was so excited to come back here. High Point University helped me grow into that confident person. I feel I can’t be beat.”