Last Thursday, while 8,000 people crammed into the Drake University Knapp Center to hear Maya Angelou speak, 25 fortunate students had the chance to meet the distinguished author up close. The meeting took place prior to Angelou’s lecture and offered students an encounter, which President Maxwell later said “defined their Drake experience.”

The evening began with the selected students meeting in the lobby of the Bell Center at 5:20 p.m. President Maxwell and his wife Madeleine Maxwell, joined students in the lobby and waited in anticipation for Angelou to arrive.

Event coordinator Sue McEntee escorted students into a small room with plush carpeting and cozy green furniture. Seated elegantly in the center of the room in a long, black dress and gold necklaces, Angelou welcomed students upon their entrance.

“I have come here tonight because I want to be useful,” Angelou said. “I have something to say and I would be remiss if I did not tell you the truth as I see it. You have that responsibility, too.”

Students crowded around the great author and listened eagerly to her eloquent and poetic conversation.

Her words echoed the importance of being useful, of aiding one’s fellow man and of appreciating the beauty found in the human voice. She told students about growing up in Stamps, Ark., where she first fell in love with the power of the human voice.

“I heard so many different voices growing up, different ways of speaking,” Angelou said. “I couldn’t ask anything better than the beautiful human voice. It reminds us that humans are more alike than we sometimes think. It brings you close to humanity.”

She told students about her time spent in Cambridge, Mass., where she learned that she was not a “writer who also taught” but rather a “teacher who could write.”

In her hourlong meeting, Angelou emphasized the importance of being an active participant in humanity.

“Never let anyone say you do not fit,” Angelou said. “Do not let anyone try to narrow down your lives.”

She appealed to students and said, “Do not waste time. Spend it easily but never waste it.”

Students were also allowed to ask questions of Angelou during the session. When asked what advice she would give to an aspiring writer, Angelou emphasized the necessity of reading.

“Read,” she said. “Go into your room, shut the door and read aloud. Read your language. It all belongs to you. It is all for you and once you have all that in you, you know you belong anywhere.”

Angelou ended the meeting telling students ,“If you make note of nothing else, make note of this – homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.”

The words, written by the playwright Terence in 154 B.C., translate to “I am a human being: I regard nothing of human concern as foreign to my interests.”

Angelou, in her personal and worldly advice, revealed humanity, both its beauty and its ugliness.