“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
There is an interesting connection between those who work in the arts and those who work in the media; in both professions the practitioner lives and breathes his or her work. The artist, by virtue of personal identification with their work, the media professional by virtue of the demands of the work itself. The news never stops, and while the print edition of the Vanguard is published only twice weekly, the demands of online, video and photo reporting are ceaseless. At each turn I am reminded of the enormity and importance of our task.
My job is to help my staff of more than fifty students serve a campus of approximately thirty thousands students and faculty, which means that there is no possible way to ensure that all of my staff or all of our readership are satisfied. The best that I can do is to read our mission statement daily, treat everyone that I encounter fairly and to always live by one rule: Keep going.
The first week of fall term has been rough on many of us, particularly those of us who deal with the final production of the newspaper (myself, our production designers and copy editors). Long days of work, classes and events such as Party in the Park and the PSU Fall Career Fair, followed by late nights reading classical Japanese literature and studying communication research methods have already taken their toll, as I woke up this morning with a cold. Still, my spirits are good and it’s with genuine excitement that I move forward into the second week of fall term.
To all of my fellow students, I encourage you to keep going as well.