Lou wanders at life and Adam McGrath

By Lou Perseghin
Collegian Staff
April 26, 2006

This article was started late. It was submitted late. In between the previous sentence and this one I stopped to take a look at some Photoshop creations online. I am a procrastinator, and I am okay with that. I am not, however, a procrastinator in the typical sense of the word. In four years with the Collegian, I have come to understand that while there will always be work to be done and a paper to be put out, there is always some room for putting things off to have fun.

My first trip to the Collegian office came during August of 2002, when I came down to help copy edit. Urged on by former Managing Editor Ali Eaton (paused here to talk on AIM for a minute or two), I was eager to help out copy editing and possibly getting an article assignment. Then I met former Entertainment Editor and future mentor Adam McGrath. Before I get to Adam, however, I need to carry my roommate’s cat around the house for a bit and discuss Roger Clemens with my other roommate.

Okay, back.

When I came into the office, Adam was slouched in a chair at the row of computers along the long side wall: an area which I would soon come to know well. As I introduced myself to Adam, he informed me that he had spent the last 20 minutes looking for “the sexiest picture of M. Night Shyamalan” [pause for imdb.com search on spelling of Shyamalan] that he could find. Oh yeah, he was wearing a tin foil cap on his head to “keep out the alien brain waves.” The cap had been a movie promotion for Signs, which had just come out, but I still found it a bit odd.

Then-Editor in Chief Karen Shuster commented about Adam’s procrastination on the actual layout of his section, and kept on with the introductions. I thought that he seemed a bit off, and perhaps I might want to steer clear of his little nook.

That week, as I read through my first freshman Collegian, I skipped to the Arts & Entertainment section. I didn’t see that it was lacking. It didn’t seem the work of a man with tin foil on his head.

In the next year, as I made my way from general staff to Listings Editor, I had many discussions with Adam on Tuesday nights, almost none of which involved the production of the Collegian, or so I thought. They did, in fact involve the Collegian, as I later found when I took over for Adam my junior year and had to manage a section myself.

While many college students profess that crunch time is when they do their best work, that rationale has been proven false to me through my work with the Collegian. While he appeared to be meandering aimlessly on the Internet, I came to realize that Adam was simply on top of things, despite his apparent dawdling. It didn’t matter if he spent 20 minutes looking for the sexiest picture of Shyamalan; the fact remains that he was already working on his pictures while other editors had not finished working on their articles.

I know it may seem irrational to play pool in the commuter lounge for an hour on a Tuesday night instead of finishing what I need to. The fact remains that I have learned how to manage work so that I have the extra time to play pool in the first place, should I choose to do so. I tested my limits through the Collegian, as did others graduating with me this year. My hope is that this will serve me well in the “real world” and not just in the basement dungeon of the Collegian office.

perseghinl1@lasalle.edu