By Will McCurdy

At the Cougar Chronicle, we take pride in the talented journalists that pass through our

publication. One such Cougar deserving of recognition is Features Editor, Nada Sewidan.

A hard worker to her core, Sewidan was drawn to us after transferring from Palomar Community

College where she was a staff writer at The Telescope, their campus newspaper. Since then, she

has been with us since 2013, and in an interview we talked about her experiences not just at the

paper, but also as a CSUSM student and the advice she has for future students.

In regards to her most enjoyable experiences on campus, Sewidan had rousing praise for her

professors saying that they were not only some of the smartest people she’d taken classes with,

but also taught her to formulate her own ideologies through incorporation of their ideas as a base.

For her fellow students, she spoke happily about the friendships she had garnered during her time

at the school, believing that they would last beyond her departure.

For her time at the paper, she enjoyed editing articles that addressed issues from a different

perspective and was proud of those that took these approaches. The same was embodied in her

favorite article, “My experience as an Egyptian American” in which she talked about the dual

life she experienced as an immigrant to the United States and her struggle to overcome not only

language barriers, but those erected by stereotypical notions of Egypt and her ethnicity.

As a bit of hindsight on her time at the campus, Sewidan dispensed two great pieces of advice.

The first was a warning against taking six classes in one semester, a situation she lamented

forcing upon herself as it culminated to an excess amount of stress being piled on her.

The second (and much more uplifting) was that of putting feeling into one’s work. It is the

mentality of some students to simply see a homework assignment as busy work for which they

only need to splatter some words onto a page and call it a day. She argued against this, instead

advocating for people to look at the assignments as something that a student can look at and be

proud of.

Crafting a masterpiece of written words can make people passionate for something they may

not even have had the slightest care about before. Doing assignments in this way leads to an

expansion of intellectual thought and ideas which breathes life into the heart of what school is

truly about: learning.

Being a fellow journalist at the paper, Sewidan was important to my own evolution at the

publication. She was the one that gave me my first article and started me on the path to the level

of journalistic professionalism present in my current work.

I think I speak for all those at the paper when I say you will be missed and it was a pleasure

working with you.