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Posts tagged as “college life”

(Archive April 2017) Full-Time Student Juggles Full-Time Job and Social Life

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Brianna Stevens | Observer Contributor

Just as many other college students, Tristen LaClair, 20, a graphic design major at MWCC, struggles with balancing a full-time job and being a full-time student.

 “I almost failed a class last semester because I was so over-worked,” LaClair recalled.        

He explained that he worked as a Food Service Aide at Heywood Hospital, and the kitchen has been so short staffed for so long, that he has had to work over 40 hours each week. He said he managed to pull his grades up in time to pass his classes, but by the skin of his teeth.  read more

(Archive April 2017) Adjunct Professor Gets Master’s Degree Working and Parenting Full-Time

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Jennifer Ballou | Observer Contributor

Laura Rosmond

Going for a Master’s degree while teaching high school, and with three young children at home, is not something that many people would consider doing. But for Laura Rosmond, she did what she had to.

When Rosmond was young, she had big dreams of being able to go into the medical field and find the cure for AIDS. Medical technologist, nurse, aide, whatever it took, she was going to solve the world’s biggest problem.

But life happens, and Rosmond had her first child before attending college. She made the sensible decision to put the plan to cure AIDS on hold and make sure that her family was taken care of first. She decided to still go into biology but realized that if she couldn’t solve everything, maybe she could help teach others so that they might.  read more

(Archive April 2017) Maintaining a Busy and Healthy Lifestyle with Corey Boucher

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Nick Cherico | Assistant Editor

Corey Boucher, age 23, is from Leominster, MA. He is currently balancing his work life as an upholsterer and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Boucher currently works for Marcoux Upholstery in Leominster. While working there, he has been a part of some big reupholstering projects, a major one being the upholstery of the seats at Fenway Park. After his company won the bid they put in for the job, they began to start working in January of 2015.

The company was contracted for 6,000 seats. 5,500 red vinyl seats and 500 blue vinyl seats were scheduled to be reupholstered over the course of 3 years. The main goal of the upholstery was to make the seats you can see on television look nicer/stick out more.  read more

(Archive April 2017) Anime Club Prepares for Boston Trip

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Micah Clark | Observer Contributor

Once a year, Mount Wachusett Community College’s anime club ‘Otaku United’ organize the club’s trip to the ‘Anime Boston’ convention (March 31-April 2 this year). It takes a lot of planning and organization to run this club about Japanese animation and its yearly adventure to Boston. 

“It’s a lot of work for most of the semester but the payoff is worth it,” said Rebekah Cohen, the treasurer. It takes a team to run the club with different officers with different duties. The club president oversees making sure everybody does their job and schedules events like bake sales to raise money for club activities.  read more

(Archive April Fool’s Day 2017) The CAPTCHA Reform: Androids Seek Equality

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Joshua Needham | Social Media Editor

The logo for the pro-android rights movement.

3/15/2033

Androids and Augmented-Americans stood together yesterday in support of the CAPTCHA Reform, seeking to have the phrase “I AM NOT A ROBOT” removed from internet CAPTCHA verifications.

A CAPTCHA internet verification box, containing the controversial phrase “I’m not a robot.”

CAPTCHA is a backronym standing for Completely Automated ublic Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart and was created in 1997 during the early days of the world wide web. The system was developed initially to prevent bots from adding URL’s to search engines, back in a time when “robot” referred to an unconscious machine or automated software. read more

(Archive April Fool’s Day 2017) Students Petition to Have MWCC Windmills Switched Off

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

Claim Wind Generated by Mills Causing Late Spring

By Joshua Needham | Social Media Editor

One of the windmills in question, caught in the act of generating excessive winds.

Students are working on a petition to have the two massive wind turbines shut down this April, saying that the excessive winds are preventing the spring season from coming.

Spring should have sprung for students on March 20th, but instead we’ve been suffering through high winds and low temperatures. It would seem as though students won’t stand for the delayed warm weather any longer and are putting together a petition to shut the turbines down to prevent spring from being blown away. read more

(Archive April 2017) The Mount Observer Goes to Convention

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Courtney Wentz | Editor-in-Chief

Over spring break, the Mount Observer staff went to the National College Media Convention in New York City, where we had to attend seminars. 

One of the first seminars was titled, “FBI Strategies for Interviewing,” lead by Professor Holly Johnson from Mercer County Community College in New Jersey. Instead of only asking questions, she suggested we keep our judgement to ourselves, try to understand where the interviewee is coming from, and adjusting our questions and approach to accommodate a thinking or feeling personality type.  read more

(Archive April 2017) Real News vs. Fake News: How to Tell the Difference

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Brianna Stevens | Observer Contributor

http://aplus.com/a/fake-news-graph-imgur-user?no_monetization=true

On March 2, Assistant Professor of Communications at Fitchburg State University, Kyle Moody, spoke at Athol Public Library about how to decipher the difference between real and fake news. 

Fake news, as defined by Dan Faltesek of the University of Oregon, is “social media news stories that feature sensational headlines referring to untrue information. These stories are produced by [individuals] who are not mandated to do journalism and are remunerated by online ad networks.” read more

(Archive April 2017) A Look at the MWCC Bemis Student Center

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Nick Cherico | Assistant Editor

In the fall of 2017, Mount Wachusett will officially unveil the Bemis Student Center. This student center will be a new space for students to do homework, play games, and hangout with their peers between classes.

According to Dean of Students Jason Zeleski, who has been leading this campaign for a new student center, the idea for the project started about two years ago with one question. That question was “how are students spending their time at the Mount?”

A feasibility study was conducted to give school officials an idea of what the campus may need to address certain student life issues. The results of the feasibility study were then taken and turned into feedback of what students like and don’t like.  read more

(Archive March 2017) Interview/Review of Local Musician Julie Cira

By editorialteam on September 10, 2024

By Bryon Harris | Observer Contributor

Julie Cira hails from the Happy Valley of Northampton, MA. She describes herself as alt-country/Americana, sometimes lo-fi indie rock, a femme-fatale, punk at heart.  Cira is relatively new to the Western Mass music scene and has made a notable entry with her self-titled three song EP.  All three songs on the EP display solid, engaging song-writing delivered by Cira’s warm and intimate vocals.  It is clear that Cira has passion and heart. Her music is soulful. read more