I’d like to thank the Academy
March 25, 2010 1:00 PM
It’s hard to believe that another year of athletics at StFX has come to a close. It is also hard to believe that this is my final editorial.
To use a well-worn cliché, it feels like just yesterday that I was sitting down with a blank word document open in front of me, wondering how I was going to grab the attention of readers returning to the university, readers who for the previous four months had traded the tedium of papers and power point lectures for the tedium of laying sod or standing behind a cash register. Whether or not I succeeded in this task is questionable, but certainly each week, my page would once again be blank and I would be faced with a similar challenge. Sometimes, the stories would basically write themselves, with an event popping up in the news, i.e. Patrice Cormier’s cheap shot or jailbird/SMU student Mike Danton, just asking to be commented on.
Other times, I’d be inspired by something I saw on campus that I thought people would be interested in. Examples of this include the story about my worst drinking experience, which was really well received, and the story about women and weights, which wasn’t.
Sometimes it was a little harder coming up with something to write about. I remember some Sunday nights sitting in front of the computer wondering how I would ever manage to put together something that was worthy of printing.
As the time advanced, I would usually look to the shower as a source of divine inspiration. Then, cleaner if not more inspired, I was always able to bang out a few words about something.
I really want to thank all of the people who read any of my writing this year. Student journalism can be pretty thankless, but because of the wonderful readers in the StFX community, this wasn’t the case for me.
It is truly rewarding when people tell me that they enjoyed my work, because I know that if something I wrote made somebody think, learn something, laugh or feel good about themselves, I have achieved my goal and the time spent was justified.
I also want to thank all of the people that contributed to the sports section this year, particularly Jami Parisien, who I could rely on to submit fantastic articles almost every week, Liam Daly, who did a great job reporting on home games and Janine Dueck and her nutrition girls, who I could always count on every week to write something thought provoking and educational.
With such a small staff, the Xaverian Weekly is truly every student’s newspaper and is nothing without contributions from volunteers.
I also can’t forget Cheryl Anne MacPherson, Jessi Fry and Devanne O’Brien, who worked countless hours on the entire newspaper, and generously accommodated for my ineptitude with In-Design, making my section look beautiful every week.
I can see that I’m getting the red light and it’s time to wrap it up. So I will finish by saying that the 2009-10 sports season was a big success, and I hope that everyone enjoyed following the X-Men and Women as much as I did. Here’s to another successful year in 2010-11, and good luck on exams.
