On a Wednesday morning of the first week of September 2022, I could be found desperately running through Mohawk’s halls in search of my first class. I thought I got to class early, the first student in a large lecture hall. Boy, was I wrong.
After discovering I’d been waiting in the wrong room for 10 minutes, I realized my timetable had updated and blasted to where I was supposed to be—Intro to Journalism.
Yanking open a heavy class door led me to a room full of students. Huffing down in the nearest seat I could find, I looked behind me at about 30 students.
Today, our class is made up of 11.
“I’d always been told the friends I made in college could last a lifetime, but it seems like every time I made a connection they’d always been driven from the program,” journalism student Nykolas Moore said.
In that very first class, our professor said that at least half of the people we sat with wouldn’t walk the graduation stage with us.
It was explained to us that the journalism program was not for the weak. Largely made up of assignments and very few tests, the course load has proven to send many people away.
“I learned from this program I don’t want to be a journalist,” my peer Gavin Williams said. “I don’t think the career path is for me because I keep getting thrown into socially anxious situations—I need to do [the assignments] for a grade but it’s not making me feel inherently better about myself.”
But almost a dozen of us have stuck through it.
“This is my second attempt at completing this program,” Sunny Mathisen, another journalism classmate of mine, said. “Watching journalism at Mohawk end the way it did has been disheartening, to say the least. I don’t think I would’ve stuck it out as long as I have if I hadn’t met my best friend—she’s been such a great support for me.”
Mathisen isn’t the only one who’s made deep connections through the program.
Before coming to Mohawk, I had very few close friends, and when the program first started, I had no clue how to make new ones.
That’s when my classmate and best friend Daisy Calderon introduced herself—but back then I only referred to her as my classmate.
“One of my goals when coming to college was to make real connections with the people in my class and to make lasting friendships,” Calderon said. “Me and Madi clicked right away and were often mistaken for childhood friends because of our close connection.”
Now, I think of her as a sister.
Many of my classmates came into the program right out of high school like me. Really, this has been the foundation of many of our adult lives.
“While I came to Mohawk to learn and make a career out of what I’m good at, it’s been a rough process of figuring out my life as a young adult while dealing with the stressful end of the program and everything we’ve lost because of it,” my classmate Lauren Wolfe said. “I’m incredibly thankful for the friendships I’ve made here, and I’m grateful that the program has given this to me.”
Living through the work we’ve been handed and especially the suspension of our program has forced many of us to learn what it means to pivot and adapt—which is the basis of journalism.
“Hopefully, what happened to us will be a learning lesson,” Jade Deanna, another of my classmates, said. “When a program is suspended, I hope the transition is thought through and the students’ feelings considered.”
During my time in this program, I’ve had to build a certain resilience to the hard things thrown my way.
That’s my takeaway from everything: when life throws you a hardship and says “figure it out on your own,” take it on the chin and do it because it’ll only make you stronger.
English