Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

To Sean Cushing and new beginnings

There’s a saying out there that tells us that every end is a new beginning, just as the end of one year is the beginning of the next. As The Journal wraps up for the year, we’d like to thank all of our readers for continuing to support our mission to pursue the truth and to tell the stories of our community. 

We’d also like in our last edition of the decade to encourage you to do what we’ve written about in other editorials throughout the year: fixate on the joy this year and this decade brought you when you reminisce around the New Year, not the struggles.

But before we talk about that, we would like to express our gratitude for one of our staff members who will become a Suffolk graduate after this week.

Sean Cushing, our assistant sports editor, thank you. Thank you for stepping into the role for the sports section with ease, bringing a passion for writing, storytelling and sports reporting to our sports pages, and with it, a professional and creative wisdom of how to write intriguing stories about Suffolk’s student athletes and more. Working as a student reporter for Suffolk in the City when you are not in the office writing and editing is a testament to your versatility in both print and broadcast journalism.

Sean’s departure and his irreplaceable qualities got us thinking. 

In a few weeks, we’ll see the end of a contentious and eventful decade. Sure, take a look at your Spotify wrap up and recollect on some of your favorites tunes this year, — did you seriously play “Old Town Road” that many times? — but don’t stop there.

Odds are in this decade or this year, you experienced some of the most ferocious heartbreak of your life and maybe even melancholic times. Odds are you also made a new friend, fell in love or discovered your passion. 

It may be easy to fixate on the woes we are facing no matter what form they come in or the vehicle in which they travel. 

What Sean taught us through his pragmatic yet optimistic nature and natural work ethic was that no matter how hard life gets, it’s better to focus on the opportunities you have in front of you instead of the obstacles you have yet to face; that it’s better to embrace solutions, not problems; to embrace goodness over evil.

The notion that New Year’s resolutions are made to be unkept isn’t entirely nonsense. Lots of us look at turning over a new leaf with an “I will no longer…” mindset. We tell ourselves we will prohibit ourselves from doing certain things or acting certain ways. But telling ourselves to stop doing something bad that gives us comfort inevitably leads to relapse. Telling ourselves to be better human beings, a different version of the same statement, is much better.

At the end of the day, it’s about happiness. And say it’s time to collectively look at the indecencies and troubles we face as an opportunity to pursue something better, not as burdens we must endure. With every kind of adversity you may face, there is also an opportunity to learn and grow.

But no matter what you’re facing Suffolk and no matter what problems you want to swiftly whisk away with the wind when we ring in 2020, we encourage you to take on a different mindset; a mindset in which we look at our resolutions as if we are running towards the goals and ambitions that make us happy, not running away from the ones that don’t. 

Hug your family a little tighter, love a lot more, hate a lot less.

Sean, thank you for all the memories we’ve made. May your future be bright and may newfound opportunities find you. 

We wish you all a happy and safe holiday season and a happy New Year.

~The Suffolk

Journal Staff

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To Sean Cushing and new beginnings