Volume 158, Issue 4
Joel Rumson
Well, well, well, if it isn’t the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not as bright as I would like, but it’s there.
February has passed, and now it’s March… Wasn’t it just October? I guess we really do need to stop and smell the roses.
February marked a turning point for The Brunswickan: We attended Canada’s largest student journalism conference, NASH, in Hamilton, Ontario. NASH is a national forum for student journalists from across the country. We met, laughed, and networked with other amazing students, slowly realizing that maybe we aren’t alone in this crazy world of student journalism.
Looking back, this moment is a special memory for me. It truly is a fucking wild world we find ourselves in, and coming together to adapt and overcome challenges collaboratively is a big step forward. It really doesn’t get any better than that.
Sometimes, I reflect on my time as Editor-in-Chief, or my time in Features from 2022 to 2024, or even further back, as a part-time reporter in 2021. If you’ve followed the magazine, you know the story: it was orientation, and hell, I didn’t even know where I was.
But at NASH, I led not just myself as Editor-in-Chief, and my team, but also that same little reporting me from 2021, into a new and wild world we never could have imagined.
Now, when I look in the mirror and see little reporter me, I proudly say, “you did it.”
What did I do, you ask? I provided my team with opportunities to grow, to learn, and to become better. Plus, I haven’t ever been to NASH — this was on my Brunswickan bucket list.
In simple terms, this means, to remember, to look back, and to smile. Not just because we went on a fantastic all-paid trip to Ontario, but, more importantly, when we almost got kidnapped in an Uber and later made it to the Hamilton Botanical Garden. When we met loads of fantastic students, and, when I almost choked Thomas because he wouldn’t stop snoring. Also, when we went to that extremely overwhelming club with smoke machines choking you out like when you were in grade 10 again and having a lunchtime sesh at your buddies… and my favourite, when we successfully found a weed dispensary in a whole new province — In New Brunswick, that is what we like to call: growth.
Everyone says, “students are the future”, but for fuck sake, can we just drop the academic talk? Can we cut the shit, and be honest with each other? The faster you do, the faster you will appreciate all the fantastic life achievements you have made thus far — that are not revolving around a fucking letter grade.
For me, one is getting weed in a new province.
But, I could go on and on for pages and pages on what I appreciate… so it is probably best we just end it here and I let you enjoy the next 25.
