The Power of Stories
Harry Scherer
Class of 2022
(2/2021) 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.
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