By: Joe Suszczynski
I first came to Central in spring 2012, but before that during the winter break I discovered The Recorder office when getting my CCSU student ID. Coming from Tunxis Community College and writing for their newspaper I wanted to keep writing for the student newspaper. When went into the office I found then Editor-in-chief Nick Proch in the layout room on the computer. After introducing myself I began asking him about the paper and what I could expect if I joined it, which after being told what I could expect I immediately made the decision to join in the coming semester.
The Recorder was vastly differently from the paper at Tunxis ranging from how often a paper gets put out to the different sections in the newspaper. I essentially found myself a niche in the paper where I was the guy who reviewed movies, wrote opinions on various topics, and covered Student Government Association meetings. The funny thing about covering the SGA meetings when I was first starting out was that people in the meetings thought I was crazy because covering SGA meetings were deemed to be boring beyond all recognition and I wanted to cover them every week. But I just took in stride because I enjoy politics and this was something I could see firsthand and at times they were extremely boring.
Another new thing I had to learn how to do was to write a news story. I had taken a journalism course at Tunxis, but only had written so many news samples so it was still a challenging thing for me. Thankfully I had some major help from the news editor, Kassondra Granata; she showed me the proper way to set up a lead and how to gauge what information was most important when writing a story.
I’m also happy that I wrote for the Recorder because I met and befriended a lot people. I am not the most social person so I think if I hadn’t wrote for the newspaper I don’t think I would have too many friends at school. The office was like a second home to me, others especially, and I would have fun just chatting up with friends on the paper.
Plus writing for the newspaper also gave me something to do in my spare time. One of the many things I can do well is write so with the added encouragement of my father I started to write for the student newspaper at Tunxis and continued on at Central.
I find my time writing for the school newspaper to be rather ironic because journalism is something I do not wish to pursue career wise. I did consider the major at one point, but after weighing the pros and cons I decided against it rather pursing a major in history with a minor in political science. But I did learn new writing methods, forged some good friendships, was given certain opportunities that most people wouldn’t be normally given, and had fun doing everything most of all.
So before I’m done, I’d just like to say thank you for the opportunities given to me by this organization, thank you to everyone in it for being nice to me and helping me and to anyone who has read my articles for the past two years—it means a lot.
Fare thee well.