DOVER, Del.

In music and words, the Delaware State University community on Thursday honored a student mortally wounded in a campus shooting, but the most striking words may have come from the victim herself.

Two days before she and another student were shot Sept. 21, DSU freshman Shalita Middletown wrote an autobiographical essay for an English composition class.

In the essay, read at Thursday’s memorial service, Middleton recounted her tomboy childhood growing up in Washington, D.C., her success in high school, and the years leading up to her enrollment at Delaware State.

“Now that I am in college, I feel there’s a lot more I haven’t learned about me that I will,” she wrote. “And I also believe that my next autobiography will be a book.”

Middleton, a 17-year-old cheerleader and biology major, never got a chance to write her book. Her life story ended Oct. 23 when she died at Christiana Hospital in Newark, more than a month after she was shot.

“We cannot make sense out of nonsense,” DSU president Allen Sessoms said Thursday, adding that the best way for members of the campus community to honor Middleton is to achieve the success that the promising student never had the opportunity to attain.

Calvin Wilson, a member of the school’s board of trustees, also urged members of the audience to better themselves.

“This is a time to grieve, but it’s also a time to grow,” Wilson said.

School administrators said Middleton, inspired by police dramas on television to become a forensic biologist, had set high standards and expectations for herself and made an impression in her few short weeks on campus.

“She was excited just to be in college,” said Leonard Davis, chair of the biology department. “She surely was going to become a success.”

Davis announced that the school is establishing a memorial scholarship in Middleton’s name for promising undergraduates majoring in forensic biology.

Middleton’s mother, Lavita Middleton, accepted a plaque from Sessoms but did not speak during the ceremony.