Time of year brings thoughts of future

Watching my former resident mentor deliver the commencement speech for his graduation, I couldn’t help but wonder what challenges I will face in my next two years before I become part of what he called “an unbroken line of distinguished alumni.”

As I enter my junior year at MSU, it feels like I am going through a higher level of stages I once went through in high school.

After completing my sophomore year in high school, I started to think what the next step in my life would be. Those final two years of high school were where I thought I had decided the course my life would take, but man, was I wrong.

I spent those two years fooled. I thought by deciding to leave my home state of Massachusetts, attending MSU and choosing journalism as my major, that the rest of the road would be a piece of cake.

However, since my first day at college I have thought much differently. With my sophomore year just recently coming to a close, my friends and I talked about what we called our “real“ life actually starting.

The first two years at college, as professors and advisers stressed for us to take on internships and attend career galleries, we relaxed. Most of us thought we lacked experience and were not ready to take advantage of all the opportunities MSU has to offer.

Now, after closing out my sophomore year and watching my mentor present his speech, the same high school feelings have resurfaced. I again must attempt to gaze into the future and make the right choices as I did before.

Some might call it déjà vu because, once again, I must decide the path my life will take. For some, this process has already begun. One of my friends will go to Ireland this summer for an internship to gain valuable work experience. Another will shadow a doctor to get a glimpse of what his life will resemble in the medical field and I am writing my first guest column for The State News.

In fact, we all will have choices to make these next few years that will ultimately determine our lives. Perhaps Kevin Painter, who gave the commencement speech for James Madison College, said it best:

“If we choose merely to go through the motions, if we choose to follow in the footprints of the cynical, the practical and the realistic, fully resigned in the fact that some things are beyond our control, not only will we squander our opportunity to achieve the fullness of our potential, but we will fail to make our mark on history.”

In my case and in the case of many hopeful journalists coming out of college, there will be many cynics constantly trying to steer us away from this profession. With newspapers’ popularity slowly declining and the rise of new technology, the realists will tell us that it will be nearly impossible to get a job.

The path we follow will most likely be a strenuous one. With the economy in shambles, recent graduates such as Painter are required to take caution before entering their profession.

“I am glad that I am not actually beginning my career right away and have a year of student teaching ahead of me,” said Painter, who has chosen to delay searching for a full-time job to stay at MSU for one more year.

Painter, like myself, fears that the plummeting economy will put a damper on starting his “real” life.

However, as I listened to his words, I realized there is still a glimmer of hope even through these difficult economic times.

Students like myself will no longer be able to kick back and relax as we go through our final years at MSU. The economy has certainly changed all of our attitudes, but maybe it will help mold us into better and more hardworking people. I am certain that all of the MSU population will now train harder than they have in previous years.

I say train, because that is what we have been doing. We might not be training in the weight room or on the field the way athletes do, but we have certainly trained for many years using our books.

The economy will unquestionably be the biggest and newest factor in the choices I will make coming out of college compared to the choices coming out of high school.

I know as I make these arduous decisions I will advance with the same mind-set as a college athlete, to make it to the pros.

Anthony Odoardi is a State News guest columnist and journalism junior. Reach him at odoardia@msu.edu.