Where are they now?

February 2021

 This month, we asked out writers to reach out and talk to
some of our past Four Years at the Mount writers and
check in with them to see where life has taken them

Degrees of success

McKenna Snow
Class of 2024

What entails being a good student? Is it one’s ability to focus solely on the subjects of her major, and not give anything else her attention? Is it her tunnel-vision goal to simply earn a degree for the sake of saying, "I earned a degree"? The life of a liberal arts student proves that to be a good student, the opposite of these posed questions is actually true. Branching out to fields not necessarily "relevant" to one’s major, living life on campus but not restricted to its borders, getting to know one’s community but also reaching beyond it—these things are all a part of the good student. These things vibrantly prepare the student for life post-graduation and enrich life as a student. Many Mount graduates embody this "good student" who can look back and say, "not only did I earn a degree, but I earned it well."

Angela Smith is one of those Mount graduates who truly made the most of her college experience and accomplished this, in part, through her work with the Emmitsburg News-Journal.

Graduating with her bachelor’s degree in 2015, Angela double-majored in Communications and Spanish. She minored in English. She then went on to get her MBA in 2017. These fields were not her only interests, however, as she said she embraced various other areas at the Mount. Angela said, "I really enjoyed getting involved with clubs, organizations, and events on campus that were related to my majors, as well as some that just strengthened my interests in other areas, like art or environmental justice." She is grateful for the "time to explore a wide variety of interests" at the Mount. These assorted interests showed in her involvement with several clubs and organizations on campus. As a senior, Angela worked for the Mountain Echo as the Community Section Editor and she was also involved with the Hispanic Cultural Association through the Office of Student Diversity, Environmental Club, and SGA. She also worked as the Managing Editor for the Emmitsburg News-Journal.

She worked with the Mount’s Marketing and Communications Office as a graduate assistant while she earned her MBA. "After that," Angela said, "I worked at a small marketing agency in Downtown Frederick and now work as the Social Media Marketing Manager at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD." Angela attributes working as Managing Editor for the Emmitsburg News-Journal as a solid foundation for her current job. Angela said that working for the News-Journal "certainly helped me develop my skills as a reporter, writer, and editor. I still use these storytelling and editing skills on the day-to-day at my current job as a Social Media Marketing Manager."

Connecting with her community within campus and even outside of it during her time at the Mount, Angela said, "I was excited to participate in clubs all throughout my time at the Mount and began getting even more involved and joining the executive teams of clubs like the Hispanic Cultural Association, Environmental Club and SGA, as the PR or social media person. It helped me think about marketing to a variety of audiences and about a variety of topics, and was a great way to practice and develop the skills I wanted to use in my future career." Working for the Emmitsburg News-Journal connected her with communities outside campus as well. "I really enjoyed getting to know the Emmitsburg community and getting involved in a different capacity than is usual for Mount students."

But even this involvement in local communities was not the full extent of Angela’s adventures in college; she also studied abroad twice. "I was very blessed to be able to study in London for a semester my sophomore year and in Madrid for a summer program after my junior year. Through these two amazing trips, I was able to immerse myself in different cultures, gain experience through an international internship, and make friends both from the Mount and from across the globe. The classes I took during my study abroad experiences helped me achieve my English minor and Spanish major."

Angela’s love of adventure enabled her to make the most of these trips and bring back rich knowledge and experience preparing her for a job in the marketing department. Studying abroad "made a lasting impact on me," Angela said. "It's such a unique experience to be able to live in the center of a historic metropolitan city as a college student and be able to immerse yourself in a new culture and new language." Overall, "the study abroad experiences were amazing!" she attested to me. "I would recommend them to anyone who is interested."

It’s almost four years since Angela got her MBA at the Mount. When asked what she missed the most about being at the Mount, she replied, "I met my best friends at the Mount, as well as my fiancé! Living just a hallway or building away from my closest friends is something that I really cherished while in college. With the pandemic making it difficult to see friends and family, it's nice to look back on a time when it was so easy to be together."

Because I am a freshman at the Mount, I find Angela’s story very inspiring. She truly shows that life on campus, and picking one or two majors, does not put limitations on one’s capacity for adventures and growth. There is so much to be done, to be learned, to be celebrated. The memories she has shared with me, the things she is grateful for, the clubs she was involved with; all these things are pieces of life as a student at the Mount well-lived. I look up to Angela as a writer, Mount alum, and simply, a good student who is ever-excited to learn. As someone who has a passion for writing, it was very encouraging to be told by Angela, "Writing is a skill you can use in essentially every career and having practical experience with writing is always useful." The Emmitsburg News-Journal is a wonderful opportunity to cultivate that skill, and to bring people together in the Mount community, pre-graduation and even post-graduation.

Read other articles by McKenna Snow

You’re not lost. You’re here.

Emmy Jansen
Class of 2023

"I wouldn’t be writing this article if I had gone anywhere else." Leeanne Leary wrote these words for the January 2015 edition of the Emmitsburg News-Journal in the Fort Lauderdale airport. This sentiment sums up the Four Years at the Mount experience better than anything else could. I think I can speak for all of us writers when I say that being a FYATM writer was not a part of the collegiate plan. It’s an opportunity that finds you, not the other way around. Across graduating classes, that is the most beautiful part of this paper; it may have needed you to write these articles, but you had no idea how much you needed it.

Leeanne graduated in 2017 and her whirlwind college years have translated into whirlwind post-graduate years. Trading the crisp mountain air for tropical humidity, she lives fulltime in Haiti, where she had worked part time while in college. While on breaks from school, Leeanne took the red eye flights back and forth between her United States home and a children’s home where she helped kids get support and job training in the tumultuous political and economic environment of Haiti. Almost eleven years later, she works full-time at the same children’s home. Other than living and caring for nine local girls, Leanne is in the process of opening a coffee shop whose profit will fund the necessary college tuitions and will provide these teenagers with job training they would otherwise lack.

Yet, she is not only an overseas philanthropist, teacher, and caregiver; Leanne has been an officer in the Army Reserves for three years after joining the ROTC program at the Mount. While this career mostly involves only monthly drills back in the United States, Leanne found herself mobilized and deployed to Afghanistan for a year, which fits the spontaneous whirlwind style of how she lives her life.

If you think this is the most remarkable thing about Leanne, you’d be wrong. Her story and career are, itself, exciting and inspiring. But her personality and the energy she brings to a room are the first things you notice. In the one Zoom call we had together, I knew I had talked to someone who truly exemplifies the word authentic. It was in the way she nonchalantly added that she was opening a coffee shop in a country that doesn’t really drink coffee to help support a child’s future, as if every recent college graduate was doing it. Our interview was interrupted momentarily by one of the girls from the children’s home that lives with her; I couldn’t see the girl, but in the way that Leanne’s eyes lit up while talking to her, there was pride, admiration, and overall happiness. She described herself as someone who "objectively experiences life," which, according to Leanne, involves passion and travel. There is no doubt in my mind that Leanne is exactly where she needs to be.

Like Leanne, I didn’t know I needed FYATM until it found me. Similarly, I didn’t know I needed Leanne until she found me. Amid giving me personal anecdotes to entertain the readers of this article, she sprinkled in tidbits of advice that I needed as a sophomore in college. While I could never do her wisdom justice, I’ll try to sum it up for you here. I think they apply to everyone, whether you’re a writer, student, or something uniquely your own.

• Don’t follow conventions in career or in your writing. You don’t have to work a 9-5 job just because you think you’re supposed.
• Never reread your articles. The first approach is the most genuine.
• College is amazing. You’re free and learning and you have friends and passion. But the world is so much bigger than college. Don’t limit yourself to college experiences. You could be at the best school in the world and it’s still not the world.
• Don’t shelter yourself from what’s possible. Know that you’re capable of more.
• Journalism is not dead. It’s more important than ever.
• It is possible to live an unconventional life.

Since the purpose of our meeting was for me to get to know her, Leanne didn’t know much about me, so she couldn’t have known how badly I needed to hear that advice. As a sophomore, the deadline to declare a major and narrow down a career field draws closer. I have always been a writer, but the age-old warning of the lack of financial stability has made me hesitant to declare as an English major. In short, I’m scared—no, terrified. I cannot stay in Emmitsburg forever, in this little cave I have built around myself with friends and classes and clubs. There is a life out there waiting for me. The world is out there waiting for me. The future is scary because it’s unknown, but the fact that it’s unknown means that I have the power to change it. Leanne comes off as someone who isn’t scared of anything, the type of person who would get on a spontaneous flight to Haiti at seventeen and come face to face with her ideal career. But I know calling Leanne fearless is probably not correct; she is scared like everyone else, but she goes towards it not away from it. Perhaps, that is the best advice she gifted me.

It is a unique role that Leanne and I have had as writers, and a unique role you have as readers. Every month, you get to read about our ups and downs and our experiences in Emmitsburg. You will see us mature and grow, hopefully, over the course of these four years. College is often said to be the fastest four years of your life and before I know it, I will be graduating and no longer writing for this paper. Memories from late night study sessions will fade, but I can always turn to these pages to remember the type of person I was and who I was becoming. Leanne summed up the greatest lesson FYATM gives its writers in her farewell article as she was graduating: "Write it down, read it later."

Read other articles by Emmy Jansen

The Power of Stories

Harry Scherer
Class of 2022

Being offered the opportunity to work for a local community newspaper during one’s college years is a gift. Being offered the opportunity to work for a newspaper as extensive and involved as the Emmitsburg News-Journal is a treasure.

Lydia Olsen, C’16 noticed glimmers of these treasures as early as her freshman year. Lydia joined the student staff of the Emmitsburg News-Journal during her first year at the Mount in 2012. She wrote for the Four Years at the Mount section for two years and then took over the Creative Writing section during her junior year.

Lydia has fond memories of her time in Emmitsburg: "Emmitsburg is such a beautiful area. I miss driving through all the windy back roads and getting to know the people of Emmitsburg and Thurmont." In addition, she says that the late nights working on editing and writing for the news-journal were nights well-spent: "The ENJ was such a wonderful experience that allowed me to develop my skills as a writer and explore topics that interested me outside of my college curriculum."

In addition to the immediate positive effects of writing for the paper that Lydia realized even during her time at the Mount, she credits the ENJ as an institution that strengthened her writing and editorial skills for the professional world. Today, Lydia works as the Director of Development and Communications at a DC nonprofit called Christ House, an organization that serves men experiencing homelessness and acute medical needs. Lydia says that she "gets to use many skills gained from working with the ENJ to write creative and captivating content that highlights the essential services provided and the stories of the men we serve to help raise money to continue the life-giving work."

In addition to the practical writing and editorial skills, writing for the ENJ taught Lydia how to practice techniques for professional life: "The ENJ taught me the importance of working on a deadline. In my current role, I write many grants where the stakes are very high. Having experience of a firm deadline better prepared me to be able to work effectively and efficiently to be able to put together the needed content in a timely manner." While deadlines are a necessary part of college courses, Lydia recognizes that there is something different about professional writing for a local newspaper where the success of a print edition relies on the writers’ cooperation with deadlines.

The ENJ was a formative experience for Lydia through the paper’s enduring lesson that human persons are drawn to listen to and tell stories. Lydia has become convinced through her time in undergraduate education and in the professional world that stories impact people in ways that graphs and even qualifiable evidence cannot. Lydia grants a superior position to stories in her work at Christ House: "If you can tell the stories of what is happening and its impact on the lives of people in a way that gets people to see the importance too, that is a superpower." Her time working for the ENJ and her current work both prove to Lydia the impressive weight of a true story presented in an engaging way.

Lydia gathered many of these stories off the beaten path of the Mount’s rural campus. Her advice to current undergraduates focuses on an interest and engagement with the local community: "Explore the areas that surround the Mount! There are so many incredible people just beyond the campus boundaries that can teach you so much. Spend time going to the small businesses, little shops, and flea markets." This advice indicates that Lydia’s love for the Mount and the paper is highly reliant on place and the people of the local community. While off campus, she worked part-time at the Catoctin Vet Clinic in Thurmont "which [she] loved and taught [her] so, so, so much." All of these experiences indicate that Lydia’s involvement on and off campus relied on her desire to help the people around her and contribute to a cause greater than herself.

Lydia fondly remembers a time when Mike Hillman, editor of the Emmitsburg News-Journal invited her over to his property to ride his horses: "This was super fun, even though once the horse I was riding took off with me pretty far down the road. Mike and I had good laughs about that afterwards." Lydia also recalls the unpredictability of the tasks involved with working at the ENJ: "You never know when working with Mike is going to lead to fostering a cat or coming over to feed the horses."

These stories were also discovered with other extracurricular activities in which Lydia participated during her time at the Mount. She served as CORE leader with the Office of Social Justice and "led many service trips to various organizations, both local and further away on spring and fall breaks." She also worked with the Office of Admissions as a campus ambassador for prospective students. In addition to these activities, Lydia was engaged with her curricular responsibilities as a psychology major and a political science minor; "one of my favorite memories was getting to do my senior project, which was studying the effects of exercise on memory retention in rats." The zeal with which she describes Lydia’s time at the Mount indicates that her college experience is marked by a diversity of experiences inside and outside of the classroom.

Lydia wants to remind current students, and especially current student writers at the ENJ that "being involved in the community that you are living in is so important and sets you up to be a good neighbor in the future. It was worth every late night staying up to edit or finish an article to be part of something so transformative." This sentiment is consistent with Lydia’s perspective that participation in community engagement should not merely be a convenient and subjectively fulfilling way to pass the time. On the contrary, Lydia’s work at the Emmitsburg News-Journal and her engagement with the Mount and surrounding community prove that these sorts of activities bear existential import for herself and those who do depend on her.

Read other articles by Harry Scherer

The best of the best

Angela Guiao
Class of 2021

During my second year at the Mount, I almost gave up writing. I had just switched majors, and I was overwhelmed with keeping up with assignments and adjusting to the new subjects that an accounting degree entailed. I didn’t think I had the time or the energy, and I was still confused as to what I wanted for myself in the future. I think I had reached the point where I felt like writing was no longer a part of my future. I started to treat writing as merely a hobby; a habit even. And writing for the News-Journal became less of a priority.

Some would say it was mere luck that the managing editor that year was Shea Rowell. But I know in my heart, that it was God who put her there. I always believed that the most unexpected people can make the largest impact on your life, but I hadn’t yet experienced it. Until I met her.

Shea is probably the most understanding person I have ever met. She has the sweetest disposition, and the brightest most welcoming energy about her. She is soft-spoken, and really listens and empathizes with the things you say. She was always patient when I needed more time, and she always managed to make things work. She showed me understanding during a time when so much was expected of me. She was the only constant in my life then, though she probably didn’t know it. She would meet with me at the café before my 8am class, just so she can hand me my pay and check-in with my progress personally. It’s weird, but I fell back in love with writing when I saw just how much passion she had for it.

I always knew she was very busy. She graduated from the Mount in 2019 with a double major in English and Music for playing the trumpet. She often participated in musical performances, both formally and for fun. And along with juggling the responsibilities as the managing editor here at the News-Journal, she also completed her work-study at the career center. Shea is very in touch with her faith, having been very active in campus ministry, even becoming a liturgical minister.

Nowadays, she is working on her master’s in English from Villanova and is residing in Pennsylvania. She credits the News-Journal for teaching her what good writing look like, and for honing her editing skills. Shea also teaches a writing workshop at a local prison, where her skills allow her to specify areas of improvement and help students progress and develop their writing abilities. She really enjoys being able to spread her knowledge about writing and is happy that she is able to provide opportunities for those who may not have them otherwise.

When I asked Shea what her advice would be for current writers, she stated, "write boldly and keep writing all the time". She advises that the current writers think outside of the box and embrace the unique opportunity we have writing for the News-Journal. She says, it is rare for writers to be able to write freely, without limits, about anything they desire. And that now, we should seize the moment, and write about things that mean something to us.

When I asked what she missed most about the News-Journal, she lit up. She said she misses the constant communication, and the rich, community of writers here at the Mount. She also misses "creating something that is worthy of being read", emphasizing the freedom to write about things that have value. It is clear from our talk that Shea’s passion runs deep. Not only for the writing expertise, but for the power writing has itself. Most of all, she misses the sense of inclusion, the gathering of likeminded individuals who share the same passion for writing. This is an experience that has been stolen away from her during this unique time amidst a pandemic.

Shea has continued on past her time here at the Mount and has dedicated time and energy into spreading her love for writing. She continues to motivate and empower people just like me every single day.

Talking to Shea, I don’t think she realizes how significantly she influences and inspires others. As managing editor this year, being in the same spot that Shea was in all those years ago, I can only hope that I have even half the impact on those after me as she did for me. She was truly my inspiration, and my motivation to continue writing. And for her, I am eternally grateful.

To Shea, I’d like to say thank you. I hope you continue to be the bright, shining star for others who may be having trouble finding their way. I know you had no idea what struggles I was going through when you were here, so I am so glad that you are just so effortlessly kind and understanding. You have such a big impact on others, and I don’t think you realize to just what extent yet. Please continue to spread your kindness and follow your passions, because I know God gave you the ability to ignite a sense of meaning in others. You did it for me. Without you, I would have stopped writing. And the fact that you unknowingly affected my life in a way that has led me to be where I am now, only proves that you were called by God. Thank you for the greatest gift.

And for all of you who have the opportunity to spread kindness and influence others, please do so. Shea taught me not only how to be a better writer, but also how to be a better person. We may have only interacted a handful of times, but a few words of encouragement have a big impact on people who need to hear it. And I can only wish to inspire others as much as she has inspired me. The world needs more people who are so selfless in their kindness and passionate about helping others. The world needs more people like Shea.

Read other articles by Angela Guiao

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