By Joseph Hammann, Staff Writer
Hey there! Perhaps you have seen me around campus or something.
It’s really mesmerizing how I am already about to graduate. Gee, time flies. I cannot deny it, though – it just felt like yesterday that I was starting my college life, back during a time when I did not know what the bottom half of people’s faces looked like.
I have met a lot of great friends, professors, other people (you know the drill), despite the fact that I am one of the most introverted, aloof, in-their-own-world type of people you’ve likely met. It is going to be rather hard to say goodbye to so many people, so many places and so many traditions I have made throughout my time at Xavier. I am glad my parents were right when they said that Xavier was the right fit for me.
I started my time at Xavier with a thing a lot of other first-years did. What was it called? Manresa? Whatever it was, there was a lot of staying in large groups and icebreakers and the like – an introvert’s worst nightmare. That is not a bad thing by any means, just not my style, but how else are we supposed to help the new students meet new friends? It also started with moving into a giant box of a room in the basement of Brockman with a broken light sensor.
I started small with clubs, joining only three in my first year: one for my LGBTQ+ identity, one for watching Japanese cartoons and one for a game that was like soccer with exploding cars. It wasn’t until the start of my junior year I would join a fourth one: Xavier Newswire.
It’s weird thinking about how I joined rather late into my time at Xavier, but I just did not see university journalism in my future, yet sure enough, there I was. I guess I just did not want to give up those Caf dinners on Wednesday nights considering I had a 4:30 to 5:45 p.m. class and another club meeting at 6 p.m.
I will admit, I was not very buddy-buddy with anyone in Newswire and I, as I mentioned before, kept to myself a lot, but I very much was a regular reader of Newswire. Perhaps, I thought, maybe I could give my silly little stories and opinions about things just like they do. Look at where that got me!
I was very particular with what I would write about so I stuck with just opinion pieces, starting off with “Convoluted Cons Can’t Cope.” A lot of my opinion pieces were like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what would stick. In many cases, it worked out in my favor and in other cases, it did not. As I evolved my writing, I branched out to more sections.
Other than doing NaNoWriMo in both 2023 and 2024, Xavier Newswire has been the place where I could express myself the most and let people see what my thinking is like put to words, and I would say it has done me numbers in both profit and views. I genuinely love writing pieces for Newswire.
I write pieces so quickly because I always feel motivated to make them and bring my words to the page (even if I go over the word limit for half of them on the first draft). Plus, some of my pieces have gotten tons of praise from my professors and one has gotten me an opportunity to help with my advisor’s research project. I always felt like I was speaking to an audience of nobody, but at least I know that that was not true.
Without getting into sappy talk, I guess every chapter must come to an end to allow for the new chapters to start. I would rather be writing for Newswire forever and not jump into the job search market that is like dangling on a rope over a pool of piranhas and crocodiles, but everything must take its course.
So, thanks for having me, everyone! It has been a treasure I will cherish for a long time! Farewell!