One night during her senior year of high school, Jenna Berndt was sitting at a Red Robin with friends, trying to decompress from the stress of college applications.
One night during her senior year of high school, Jenna Berndt was sitting at a Red Robin with friends, trying to decompress from the stress of college applications. She’d already been rejected from one school and was second-guessing everything. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of neon letters that looked like they said, “UVU.”
She looked again. And again.
When she stood up to leave, she finally had a clear angle on the sign. It actually said, “yum.”
“I still don’t really know how I saw ‘UVU,’” she laughed. “But for some reason, it just stuck with me. It felt random, but also, weirdly right.”
That instinct turned out to be one of the best she’s ever had. This spring, she’ll walk across the Utah Valley University commencement stage as an English graduate with a 4.0 GPA, eight consecutive semesters on the dean’s list, two published poems, and a professional resume she built one opportunity at a time. But the numbers, impressive as they are, only tell part of the story.
Berndt grew up in Sammamish, Washington, the second youngest of six kids. She was adopted from Korea at five months old — an experience she said has shaped everything about how she moves through the world.
“I don’t always have a perfect way to explain it, but I know it’s shaped how I see people and how I understand the world,” she said. “I think it’s made me more aware of differences, identity, and experiences. And it’s made me really in tune with my own feelings and other people’s too.”
That emotional attunement found its outlet early. As a kid, she was always creating crafts, paintings, and drawings. But writing was the thing that stuck. Short stories gave way to poetry in middle and high school, where putting words on a page became how she processed her inner world. Then, in a high school journalism class, something clicked.
“It was the first time I realized that writing wasn’t just something I did in my free time, but something I could actually pursue,” Berndt said. “When I was choosing a major, my gravitation toward English just felt right.”
Ask Berndt what she’ll take away from her UVU education, and she doesn’t hesitate: the people. Professors who knew her name, read her work, and pushed her to go deeper. Classmates in UVU’s creative writing workshops and writers who genuinely challenged and inspired her.
“If it weren’t for their encouragement, I don’t think I would have had the courage to submit my poems,” she said. That encouragement paid off. Two of her poems have now been published in campus literary journals — work centered on the themes closest to her: mental health, identity, and her adoption story.
The smaller class sizes she found at UVU weren’t a consolation prize — they were exactly what she needed. Hearing friends at larger universities describe feeling lost in enormous lecture halls only deepened her appreciation for what she had.
“I never felt like just another student here,” she said. “My professors knew me, cared about my work, and genuinely wanted me to succeed.”
Berndt’s UVU experience didn’t stop in the classroom. Her writing got her in the door for a student marketing internship with UVU’s Smith College of Engineering and Technology her freshman year — a moment she described as seeing her skills translate into the real world for the first time. From there, each opportunity opened another door. She’s since created content for UVU Men’s Hockey, BYU Men’s Lacrosse, and UVU Intramural Sports, building her presence in social media and content creation along the way.
“What’s been really cool to see is how something I’ve always loved opened those doors for me,” she says, “and then being able to build on that through creativity and hands-on experience.”
For Berndt, UVU commencement is more than a graduation ceremony. It’s a message to a younger version of herself.
Middle school and high school were hard. Mental health struggles, difficult friendships, moments when the world felt like it was closing in. She remembers desperately wishing she could fast-forward to the future — some version of life where things were okay.
“I honestly dedicate this moment to my sixteen-year-old self,” she said. “The version of me who felt like everything was falling apart and so desperately wanted to be teleported to the future. Well, the future is here now, and I did it.”
“Utah Valley University gave me the space to find my voice, the people who saw something in it, and the courage to finally see that in myself.”
