Careers take an unexpected turn

By: Amanda Carpenter

Sometimes people don’t end up in the job they had hoped to be doing, but follow a different path that leads to something better than they imagined.

This was certainly the experience for Bill Kuchman, now Sunday editor at the Democrat and Chronicle, and two other recent Fisher alumni. Kuchman has worked at the paper for two and a half years. He had originally wanted to be a sports writer, but decided that he liked writing for big events and feature stories. Kuchman was the editor in chief of the Cardinal Courier his senior year at Saint John Fisher College and then realized that he didn’t want to interview people but wanted to do something else.

Kuchman started out doing freelance work in page design and then worked up to doing page design for the Democrat and Chronicle and now maintains its Sunday paper, which is the most popular. When asked what one of his biggest challenges was in the workplace, Kuchman replied “learning how to manage people is one of the biggest challenges. A lot of my work is across departments and other managers. Being young is also a challenge, especially if some people have been there for a longer time and they are older, it’s a generational gap.”

Emily Shearing had a similar experience to Kuchman with her career path in having had no desire at first to be a reporter. Originally, Shearing wanting to be a pharmacist, and while she was attending Monroe Community College, she realized she wanted to be a reporter, and later transferred to Fisher to pursue her dream.

Since Shearing graduated from Fisher, she has been in three different positions at the Democrat and Chronicle. The first was as a reporter at Insider magazine for about a year and a half. Last year she moved to the business section working on young professional stories where she wanted to work on a growing audience. Now, she is a reporter on the metro desk, where she covers 13 towns on the west side.

For Shearing, one of her biggest challenges as a young professional writer is finding a voice for herself. “You have to find your own voice in this business, and making it your own is very difficult. You have to learn to put your personality in there.”

When asked what are some current challenges in the workplace, she said “people are struggling with the outlet of where we’re going to go with newspapers, is the printed edition going to decrease? It’s a slippery slope; you have people generating this content for free, in the next 10 years, anything can happen.”

          The term “anything can happen” is something that describes Craig Kanalley’s career path as well.

“Growing up I wanted to be in print journalism because I like behind the scenes, not in front of a camera but as I finished my time at St. John Fisher, online was just becoming bigger and bigger,” explains Kanalley. He was online editor of the Courier and ended up going to graduate school for online journalism. From that he realized that he wanted a full-time job in the online industry, which is exactly what he’s doing today. Since November of 2009, Kanalley has been the senior editor of traffic and trends at the Huffington Post.

Like Kuchman, Kanalley finds his lack of experience sometimes is a challenge to overcome. “I think being so young, while it has advantages like being really energetic and having a fresh perspective, has been challenging at times,” he said. “That lack of experience can lead to some silly mistakes, but you learn from them and you grow.”

Following a different path has been very successful for each of these three young professionals and all of them are thrilled that they are in their current positions.

“Our job is to get the news out to people and it’s really exciting, we get to decide what to put out there and tell people,” says Shearing, who explains how she is always excited about seeing different things going on in the different towns she covers.

As for Kanalley, the thrill of living in New York City and meeting new people is stimulating enough for him. “Having the chance to live in New York and meet journalists at The New York Times and elsewhere that I just have tons of respect for is very exciting.”

Although these three talented young professionals ended up in different aspects of the workplace that they didn’t intend to, they are all very content and successful. Kuchman adds “times are changing, people are getting laid off, and a lot of times you just have to push all of that aside, you still have to go in and do your job. We are the lucky ones.”

SWAV makes difference in community

By Amanda Carpenter

People involved with the Students With A Vision Club at St. John Fisher College say they set out to make a difference in people’s lives around Rochester. The group’s activities put that sentiment into practice.

According to Sally Vaughan, Fisher’s director of campus community service, the club started back in 2005 when a couple of freshman service scholars got the idea for the club in spring 2004. “The club didn’t really have much money or support in the beginning, it was more of an idea at first that turned into something bigger,” explains Vaughan, who has been SWAV’s adviser since the beginning.

Eventually, in the fall of 2005, SWAV was recognized as a club by the Student Government Association. More students joined in over the years to help make an even bigger difference.  

The main elements that SWAV focuses on are the elderly, education, the environment, and animals, and since the club centers most of its attention towards the city schools, fundraising plays a distinct role in getting supplies that are needed for the different activities that SWAV does.  “We’re doing a lot of planning for the future,” says Vaughan.

           When asked about why the students are involved in this club, Vaughan replies with “many of the students are building on a life they already had. It’s almost like a network.” Vaughan refers to the fact that a lot of the students in the club have volunteered and done community service in high school and are continuing the tradition through their college years. “These students are not doing this because they have to do it but because it exposes them and expands their circle,” explains Vaughan.

Emily Witty, a junior and the president of SWAV, said  “I am a part of SWAV because I enjoy volunteering and I truly believe that we are all on this Earth to help one another. Not only that, I get to meet students on campus who enjoy the same things I do.” Witty has been involved with SWAV since she was a freshman and  would love to work for a non-profit someday.

“We do events that help food pantries, Habitat for Humanity, the inner city schools in Rochester, and a wide range of places to give hope and help to the Rochester as well as the Fisher Community,” explains Witty.  

She recalls a certain moment while visiting with an elderly woman at the Friendly Home. “She kept telling me over and over again how she went to Nazareth and I went to Fisher, and as I was painting her nails, I just kept thinking about how patient I had to be with her, because I knew she had Alzheimer's, and that my grandmother is losing her memory slowly, and I know she appreciates when I am patient with her.”

  Project Community Convergence, or PCC, is one of SWAV’s main events.  It started in 2004 will be going into its sixth year. This event involves about 80 Fisher students assisting schools around the Rochester city with painting, cleaning, washing and whatever else they can help with. The co-chairs of this are Danielle Burgos and Anthony Gleason.

Burgos, a senior, is PCC’s renovation  coordinator and as a First Generation scholar, she has taken part in this every year.  “We reach out to schools and try to make Rochester a better community,” adds Burgos.This event involves a lot of planning and fundraising and takes place during two weekends with the volunteers working about 12-18 hours throughout that time. Among those volunteers are principals of the schools and also alumni of Fisher.  

When asked what she was most looking forward to about this year’s PCC, Burgos responded with “this year, the students at Charlotte High School actually get to work with us, and that’s awesome that they get to have pride in their school by making a difference.” After the two weekends of work, a “social” takes place a week after in which the principals and janitors of the schools give the volunteers insight on how the kids reacted to the new improvements and how the project impacted them.

       “These students volunteer on a regular basis,” says Vaughan. “I believe that they (SWAV) can do it, and the bigger the group, the bigger the difference can be made.” Witty adds “each student that volunteers with SWAV does it out of selflessness, and does it because they truly enjoy making their community a better place - and that’s inspiring.”