It has been my pleasure to sit down with Sarah Hemenway for my interview this month. Sarah has been a long standing STF member since 2001 and took an extended leave of absence for a few years while she had her little ones. Thank you, Sarah for sitting down with me this month and letting us learn a little more about you.

1.You have been a member of STF since 2001, what brought you to STF?

I actually don’t remember how I ended up joining STF specifically. A guy I was dating was interested in Star Trek and we watched Voyager together (it was airing live at that point). I assume some sort of web searching introduced me to the idea of roleplaying it and, well, there you go.

2.You have served in a variety of positions, both IC and OOC, during your tenure in the club. What has been your favorite position to serve in and why?

I really love being an Academy CO. I like the mentorship opportunity it provides with new members and I enjoy the shorter sims. My senior staffs are usually very close knit and, now with the advent of Discord, we talk several times a week about supporting the cadets on the ship (and how hard it is to play text-based poker). It’s just a really fun environment to be in, IC and OOC.

3.Which ships have you CO’d in and do you have a favorite?

I’m currently the CO of the Challenger and the Chimera. This is the third time I’ve been Challenger CO and I’ve also been CO of the Atlantis, the Olympic, and OP42.

4.Which is your favorite CO character from the Star Trek series and why? Do you try to emulate any of them with any of your characters?

My guilty confession is that I really enjoyed the character of Lorca… but no, I don’t emulate any of them with my characters.

5.Do you have any long standing characters and can you tell us about them? Do any parts of your character reflect yourself when you write about them?

My longest standing character is my CO character on the Chimera. She started as my CO character on the Olympic and then was also my CO character on the Atlantis. She’s a pretty take charge personality, but she also tends to fly by the seat of her pants and improvise along the way. Her background is a pilot, so she works really well on the Chimera. All of my characters have some part of me… that’s how I create them.

6. Where do you use to get inspiration to create your characters?

I have a pretty tried and true method for creating characters. Each character is based around some core aspect of my personality and then I wing it from there. I actually really struggle with writing bios before I’ve played the character… once I have that core personality piece nailed down, the rest of the character usually only comes to me as I start playing it.

7.Do you think that your experience in the club has helped shape your interactions outside the club or do you think you bring more of your life experiences into the club?

It’s been a flow both ways. Even though I had a ton of outside the club leadership training before taking an OOC role in the club, OOC roles in STF really helped me find my footing as an actual leader. Since then, I’ve been pretty busy IRL in a variety of leadership roles and that foundation here was invaluable. Now, it’s more taking the maturity I’ve gained from life experience and using that to mold my STF-leadership style a little. I definitely look back on some things from my previous work here and laugh at times.

8.You took a hiatus from the club for a number of years, what drew you back?

Uh, to be honest, partially a lack of any hobbies at the moment. But mostly, the people. Even in the 10 years I was out of the club, I thought about various people, wondering how they were doing. Finally, all of the stars aligned and it seemed like a good time to come back. The welcome from old friends and new members alike has been amazing and you’re pretty much never getting rid of me at this point.

9.As a member that was here in the early days and back now do you see a difference with the rping aspect of the club? How does it seem different from earlier days?

It’s actually really interesting to see how different things are and a lot of it is a reflection of really different club software. In the early days, posts tended to be a lot shorter and topics weren’t really paid much attention to. There weren’t a lot of side sims beyond the usual psych eval/physical stuff. Character development was really done through main sim work. Now, with fancy threading and all of that, crossposting has become a thing and thread topics are much more utilized. I’m slowly catching up on the changes. :)