Our advanced reporting class contributes to the U-News page of the Orlando Sentinel. This week it featured Lisa Velardi's story on student soldiers returning from Iraq and are now taking classes at UCF. Usually, two of the best stories go into the U-News page, but this time the story on student soldiers was the only one to go in and I can understand why.
The article titled, Student-soldiers have to adjust to life without war, focused on two students, Jason Hatcher and Andrew Zeeb. The lead starts off by making a comparison between the normal lives of UCF students and what Hatcher and Zeeb had to do in a day to day basis. Hatcher spends the day loading Humvees to a cargo plane and Zeeb repairs M16 rifles, while UCF students would usually worry about their class loads and GPAs.
When Velardi makes this lead, it automatically attracts readers to stop and think about their busy life and come to a realization that there are others who do have it worse. As the story unfolds, it puts the readers inside Hatcher and Zeeb's heads. The story includes details of Hatcher spending time in the 130 degree desert of Kuwaiti and missing the rain. Then it leads to a quote from Hatcher that says, "I just walked around in the rain. I was excited to talk to regular people again." I liked this quote because it makes the reader feel a connection to the person.
The story also mentions about how Hatcher and Zeeb have witnessed carside bombings and fellow soldiers' casualties in Iraq, but that has not made them suffer from post-traumatic stress which they are fortunate about.
It's hard to realize sometimes that people going off to fight the war in the Middle East to protect our freedom are people my age and that at one point in their lives, they were laughing at their favorite movie, playing a sport or splashing waves at the beach, just like normal people would do. But they made a choice to go into battle and give up those things so we could enjoy them. And as students, the one thing we aren't really taught in school, is to just stop once in a while and think about what our other fellow students are doing with their lives because as we do worry about our GPA's and classes, there are others who are worrying about just surviving today. And this is just the story to remind us that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I agree. Lisa did a great job on reporting this story. She turned an exhausted topic (the war) into one that students and the community could relate to. It was really great to learn about students our age, who have fought in a war are now back on campus to finish what they started. That's real dedication.
I must say that this was a pretty awesome post. I have recently been looking into the AmeriCorps program and while joining that organization is similiar to the military service in a way, there are vast differences. Sometimes we forget to, sorry for the cliche word usage, stop and smell the roses in our day to day life. Especially as college students, we can relate to eachother in the essence that we too are usually caught up with our GPA's, social activities, and other. While our peers are not, simply put.
Post a Comment