Photo courtesy of Derek Futterman

Now that you’re less than a semester away from graduating, it’s time to do a little reflection on your time at Hofstra. In just four years you went from being a theater kid to understanding NHL game summaries better than ESPN+’s score graphics. Regardless of your theater knowledge then and sports knowledge now, you undoubtedly made the most of your time here by taking advantage of all the opportunities Hofstra and the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication have to offer.

As your more mature future self, I honestly wouldn’t recommend changing much about your college experience. You made it through C&E without too many scars, tried everything you possibly could – other than WRHU – with the time you had. You definitely made the most of your time at Hofstra by writing for The Chronicle, filming and editing packages for an Emmy-award-winning show, photographing and working with University Relations, photographing and working on sets of all HEAT network shows and trying to photograph each Hofstra athletics team at least once.

One thing that I’d implore you to remember is that it is okay to say “no” and not do everything all the time. In your junior year you learned that particularly, but it’s a very important lesson. It might have relieved quite a bit of stress from trying to manage so many things if you had developed the ability to say “no.”

It’s interesting to wonder what life would be like without the coronavirus pandemic interrupting your college career. Without the pandemic, your interest in sports photography might have developed even later, if at all. The experience of coming back to Hofstra after staying home and taking classes on Zoom with little to no social interaction with others your age greatly impacted the beginning of photographing sports for you.

The interest you had in researching how COVID-19 impacted men’s soccer began your interest in photographing sports, and I hope that without that pivotal event you would still be where you are today, but who’s to say? Along that line of thinking, would you have still ended up as the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle? Without your more recent interest in sports, would you have even joined a sports networking club that attended a Yankees vs Red Sox game where you actually considered becoming the editor-in-chief, at the encouragement of the past EIC? Who knows!

Isn’t it crazy how much life can change yet stay the same in four years? When you started at Hofstra, your dream was to be a theater critic or entertainment journalist, but now your passion lies in the field of sports photography. As a person though, you are still the same empathetic young woman you were before even considering attending Hofstra. Your values and friendships have lasted, and through your on-campus involvement you have been able to meet and make so many new friends. Remember one of the main reasons you chose Hofstra? How every student you saw on your first campus tour seemed to know and greet each other in passing? How ironic is it that that’s still one of your favorite aspects about the campus environment today.

With just 13 more weeks of classes left in your collegiate career, so much can still happen. Time to continue rewriting your history at Hofstra and capture every memory possible on your camera.

Talk to you again real soon,

Alexis