Growing Up on a College Campus

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up on a college campus with your parent being a professor? Some kids that have experienced that even came back to work or teach at the same school as their parent.

Kathryn Wright, now an archivist at Mercer’s Jack Tarver library, is one such kid.

Wright grew up in the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, and her father began working at Mercer when she was two.

“My earliest memories are of kind of wandering around campus,” Wright said.

She also recounted how much campus has changed and grown since she was a child.

“The campus basically used to be a lot less pretty,” Wright said. “There was a lot more chain link fence instead of nice brick fence.”

Wright recounted memories of being dropped off at ‘free faculty babysitting nights’ at the old sororities sometimes, where they would put on Disney movies and provide snacks.

Wright’s father is Gary Blackburn, who is still an art professor at Mercer University.

“Kids fit in well,” Blackburn said in regards to bringing children on a campus like Mercer’s. “A lot of people brought their kids up in the afternoons.”

Blackburn said that bringing children on campus was flexible to schedules, it was easy to entertain them, especially in the art department, and they were very safe.

Wright attended Mercer for her undergraduate degree and later came back to work at Mercer in the archives department, a job similar to one she held at the university while she was a student.

“In terms of growing up here and then deciding to work here — I got to see all these huge changes Mercer has made within itself and in terms of Macon, like the community,” Wright said. “I think these are good changes, and I kind of wanted to be a part of that.”