They keep us young.
Last night the incoming editor-in-chief of The Samford Crimson poked her head into my office. I was just about ready to call it a night, but students will make you stick around.
Emily is this year’s news editor and she is, as they almost always are at the paper, one squared away individual. She asked me a question about this and we talked about that and then the next thing you know we’d spent an hour discussing journalism and what our newsroom can be. She left at 8 p.m.
Someone asked me a few years ago why it is I want to do this kind of work. And there’s the answer: It is important to the community, but even more so to the students I get to work with. When you have passionate college students doing work they care about, you’re surrounded by a special treat, indeed. Those people deserve as much passion as energy as you can give back. It only makes them better.
And to have the opportunity to work with enthusiastic young men and women so dedicated to learning their craft is simply invigorating.
They asked me that when I interviewed for the job here, too. I went through the importance part and the passion part and the influence my media adviser had when I was in school and then I said “Plus, maybe they’ll keep me young!”
The guy that asked me that just retired last year. He’d watched his second grandchild go through college. Now he goes out and runs four or five miles every day. He agreed with my answer during the interview, I remember it clearly. He knew about students keeping the rest of us young.
The shortest answer, as this year winds down, is that it is a treat, and worth it, and hardly seems like working. And weaved among all of that is a great value.
There’s only one more week with this year’s talented crew. Four of the nucleus I work with are graduating. I’ll break them all down next week after our last, and surely poignant meetings. But first there’s another paper to get through and the departmental picnic and then lost last gatherings.
They keep us young.
I have a small and growing mound of papers to grade. We can blame the silver hair on that.
