Student Spotlight Jessica Coacci

Kamal ojibara

As a freshman student at Farmingdale Sate College, Jessica quickly got acclimated to the college lifestyle. When she was picking out her college choice, Farmingdale State College was not one of her first choices. She planned on attending many different universities, such as Stony brook and even the University of Kentucky.  However, after much deliberation and consideration, she decded to come to Farmingdale State College. She stated that the reason she came to Farmingdale was because it had cheerleading, offered a major she was interested in, and it was in close proximity to her house.

Another thing that she discussed was how she had a great interest in journalism. The reason that she loves journalism is because she got to write about things of great importance to people. Some of the resounding points she made was that how would we as people get the daily news, how would we learn about fun celebrity gossip. She talked about how she loved to learn about how the camera works, how to write news broadcasts and how to edit a story whether it be print or online.

She emphasized about how cheerleading increased her social skills greatly. She liked the fact that she got to talk to strangers about different topics. This to her was not the easiest thing to do. But as she continued it became much easier to talk to different people that she wasn’t familiar with. She talked about how communication was one of the most important skills necessary for any job, across any industry. This is definitely true. Anything you do in life today requires some form of communication.

After further talking to her she talked about how her dream would be work in the city. Working in the city as a journalists might actually be fun when you think about it, because as she said it herself, the city is where the most action takes place. More specifically, she would like to report current events and work with several news sources. The city is definitely perfect for this.

She also revealed that she likes to spend time on social media. The platforms that she used most were Instagram and Snapchat. The love of social media allows her to stay active and pay attention to the world around her. The aspect that the different social media platforms bring different types of stories made her love social media.

Just as much as she loves journalism she also loves cheerleading the same way. She did cheerleading from the 6th grade all the way up till now. This year she joined the Farmingdale State College team. The things that she loved about cheerleading were the uniforms, homecoming day and the family-like atmosphere that is cheerleading.

She stated that cheering helped her stay positive and teaches her not to give up, and to also be grateful for what she had. I thought this was pretty cool that being on a squad can cause people to push themselves further. It’s that family-like atmosphere that allows each one of them to push one another. I find this to be awesome.

Another interesting thing she said was that the team’s enthusiasm helped push her on days where she might be having a bad day and wanted give up. They helped her believe in something that she thought was not possible. The family dynamic also just does not apply here, but also applies to the everyday aspect of life. Because of this it can make individuals exceed what they think they can do.

The other nugget that I got from speaking to her is about how serious cheerleading was. I knew that they trained for it but I didn’t know that it was taken this seriously. There is a national NCAA championship for cheerleading, which happens every year. She talked about how they were required to do weight training and various stretches. There were even some people on the team that did not make it. It’s treated just like other sports. They train during the summer and throughout the whole year. She showed me a video of her doing a flip, and I couldn’t imagine doing something like that. I told her that I would be scared of my life. It also seems that trust is a big thing. For those girls to be getting tossed up in the air and being caught like that, there must be some kind of trust between their teammates for that to happen.