Maybe we'll call this our Stamina Issue.
Start with Ned Gignoux '99, who is a pretty typical Colby person. He is smart,
has a good sense of humor and likes to have fun. Gignoux won't like us picking
him out because he's also quite modest, another feature you find in a lot of
Colby folks. The characteristic that he shares with a large measure of the
students, staff and faculty at the College is that he works like the dickens.
Gignoux and his pals who comprise the staff of The Colby Echo all are
prodigious workers, as we discovered when we spent 24 solid hours with them
while they assembled a newspaper. They pull with and for each other, inspired
by the goal but motivated by pride, both in the product and in themselves. They
work long after many people would pack it in, and then they go and do something
relaxing, like write a 10-page paper for class.
Linda Tatelbaum also knows a thing or two about a hard day's labor. Every day
for the past 20 years she has carried water from a spring to supply her house,
raised her own food and basically made a lifestyle of what a generation ago
were called "chores." And she writes about it. Her introspective book, reviewed
in this issue, describes how the work has shaped who she is.
Then there are the trio of international students profiled in the Student Life
section of this Colby. All three are superior students and highly
involved people. They squeeze more from each day than some people do from a
week. Committed, focused, disciplined--man, they work hard.
Where does this collective passion for productivity originate? Is it the
water? The air? The trees? Uh-uh. It's the attitude. Slacking may be the
buzzword for the '90s generation, but there's precious little evidence of it
around here. Work is cool. Work is in.
The extent to which the people at Colby feed off of each other's energy may
have something to do with why faculty can teach so well and also do world-class
research, why students like Gignoux can stay up all night putting a newspaper
together and then show up for Spanish class ready to learn.
Working, it appears, is contagious.
Kevin Cool
Managing Editor, Colby
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