We are pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural First-Year Summer Reading Essay Contest, open to all members of Illinois Wesleyan University’s Class of 2019. The general topic of the essay this year was our Summer Reading selection,Unlikely Disciple: 
A Sinner’s Semester at
America’s Holiest University, by Kevin Roose. Students had the opportunity to discuss this selection during New Student Orientation, take part in programming for this year’s intellectual theme of Nation(s) Divided?, hear the voices of our faculty members and even the voice of Kevin Roose himself, but the discussion stands incomplete without the most important voice of all—our students’ voice, the many voices of the men and women who are Illinois Wesleyan University’s Class of 2019.
Read each of the award-winning essays by clicking through to the Digital Commons @ IWU!
First place winner
Still a Jerk, by Benjamin Alan Zentner ’19
Honorable Mention essays
Between Two Worlds by Emma Marie Haan ’19
The Complexity of Balance by Kathryn Halford ’19.