I have two things to say today; one is extracurricular and the other is weather-related.
1) I joined Campus Times and my life simultaneously improved and got worse, in a sense. It’s true that it’s a huge time commitment, so being the Arts & Entertainment editor definitely hasn’t left me feeling like I have all the time in the world to do my other extracurricular activities or my homework. (That is the “how my life got worse” part.) But I think ultimately that feeling has helped me. I have to manage my time better this semester, otherwise I die. When I’m left with too much free time, I just procrastinate like a pro, but when I have a very limited amount of time to handle my life, I become an efficiency machine.
Setting aside how CT has affected my time, though, it has inarguably been the best social experience I’ve had since coming to college. (That is the pure and simple “how my life improved” part.) I worked on the newspaper for all four years of high school and can honestly say, aside from the friends with whom I initially joined, I don’t think I made a single friend through that process. The atmosphere was always intense, cut-throat, and stressful, and although being on that paper taught me a lot about journalism, writing and editing, Photoshop and InDesign, etc., it wreaked havoc on my mental health.
CT has been the complete antithesis to that. I walked in on my own one day with no friends, and over the course of only a few weeks, I feel as though I am, in some way or another, friends with almost everyone on staff. I think what’s special about CT is that, yeah, our paper isn’t the most amazing-looking thing in the world, but it holds its own, and almost more importantly, we have such a great time creating it together. We’re not just drones sitting in our office in Wilson Commons, focused only on making a paper and silently staring at our computers. In addition to actually doing our work, we play music, goof around a little, make fun of each other, even watch Beauty and the Beast to keep ourselves awake while waiting for the Editor-in-Chief to approve pages at 4:30 in the morning. Sometimes we’ll even do stuff together outside of CT, like watch a movie or go out for dinner. The sense of camaraderie that comes from being on the paper has perfectly balanced out the fact that I feel as though it is eating my life sometimes.
2) It was 50 degrees and sunny for the past two days, and I could see the grass. Now it is snowing. That sucks.