Time to say goodbye

KRISTEN CATALANOTTO NEWS EDITOR KMC723@CABRINI EDU

The time has come for me to say goodbye to the Loquitur. Tuesday, March 29 is my official last day to layout out a newspaper that I have put time and effort into for the past two years.

I can remember sitting in journalism class on the first day of my sophomore year, looking at all the editors and how professional and intimidating they looked. I immediately became entranced by the idea of reporting and telling stories. I tried my best to seek out stories I thought readers would enjoy.

Thanks to Dr. Zurek’s persistence, I threw out all the grammar rules I had learned and started to adopt a completely new way of writing. My fellow editors and I spent countless hours in the newsroom, trying to make sure we were producing a paper that we could be proud of. We frequently made visits to Wawa at 1 a.m. to get a 16 ounce cup of coffee. At times, we laughed until we were blue in the face and we have had run-ins with Public Safety officers.

It has been a long road filled with huge potholes and hills, but I can honestly say that I am proud of our accomplishments. By no means were we perfect, especially when we placed question marks in headlines on the front page story, when there was no need for one! But as much as everyone saw us as journalist, we were also students. We were learning as the year progressed.

We were able to cover a wide range of story topics including a Nazi rally held at a near by park and the drug use on campus. Even though it has been an extremely stressful school year, I would not change the way everything has turned out.

I value all the friendships that I have gained through this experience. I learned that in seeking the truth, sometimes you have to listen to a lot of bull, but eventually the truth does come out. I learned how to be a journalist and ask the questions that everyone else wants answered. I learned an enormous amount of leadership and teamwork skills by working with various amounts of people, especially my fellow news editor, Lauren Reilly. Reilly gave so much of her time to make sure we got the tough questions answered. She was always there at 3 a.m. making sure the story was perfect. Her dedication is the reason the paper was so successful this year.

Good luck to next years editors, I am sure you all will do a great job. I have one bit of advice for you, don’t take yourself too seriously and always question what people tell you!

As a breed set apart, athletes have been shown to demonstrate superior control as far as applying both composure and focus to their main objective. As Jenkins so clearly conveys, the laziest of pro athletes work much harder than the average person as a means of getting better. Similarly, the weakest of players shows more bravery when confronting a more robust adversary.

Regardless of such, one cannot imply that athletes are better than any other being. For instance, in the context of entering that final, decision-wining game, it would be normal for a player to undergo both anxiety and threat. What sets them apart from other scholars is their ability to better control fear under strenuous situations and thus attain a more positive outcome.

According to Justin Walsh, a basketball player for the junior varsity and varsity team, stress is often turned into adrenaline prior to the start of the game, “There’s so little time during the game and so much to accomplish that you really can’t keep thinking about how pressured you may be. The key is to prepare yourself mentally before the game and give it all you have on the court.” Furthermore, Walsh added that knowing you did not do your best will amount to stress after the game.

In the context of a typical, non-athletic scholar, learnt behaviors of this nature don’t necessarily take part as a reliable source for motivation. Take the example of a student working all night to meet a deadline. Under such a pressure, physical reactions associated with anxiety and pressure will lead to forms of paralysis, similar to entering a blank, tunnel-like mindset. Predictably, such lack of control over pressure will heighten chances for failure and underperformance. So why not “train” for schoolwork, as an athlete would for a game? Athletic dedication for success and intense training can serve as an instrumental means for reformatting ones flimsy work habits into that of a trained, aggressive student.