Community and Care: Diving the American River

Born and raised in Sacramento, Steven Bruegeman grew up with National Geographic on all the coffee tables and the kitchen counter. Almost everything in his life has been tied back to California ecology. After going back to school in retirement and getting a degree in Environmental Conservation, Bruegeman found Dolphin Scuba- the Sacramento scuba diving hub. Now a pro, Bruegeman takes on river clean-up dives and teaches kids scuba and Ecology Awareness. I interviewed him on May 11th at Dolphin Scuba. Continue Reading

Water Wisdom with Katelyn Vengersammy

There are many ways to learn more about the earth, as well as how to save it. One way is through community events. In this 5-minute podcast, journalist fellows Katelyn Vengersammy and Aviana Loveall visited the Sierra College, Rocklin campus as they hosted an Earth Day event on April 28, 2022. This event lasted from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with vendors,  student clubs, small businesses, nonprofits, and others that are local to the Sacramento area. Events ranged from nature walks, a rock-climbing wall, craft-making, and giveaways. Continue Reading

Back on the Court? Athletes After COVID

Basketball player Greg Nash dribbling on court with other players and team on sidelines inside

The year 2020 was an intense, wild, and upsetting year for athletes and the local basketball community was hit hard. The remainder of the 2019-2020 basketball season was canceled- meaning the championship of the California Junior Colleges and California high school championships were gone. The local community was shocked and felt that all the hard work that we had put in was wasted. Continue Reading

Yes I Am

lock on fence with 'sos' reference that also appears as 's loves s' because a heart-shape stands in for 'o'

Words were screamed across the room
A man was beaten, battered, and tried
Everything comes to a halt
It all comes down to this; who lied?

I watch from the safety of my own home
Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard,
The trial that is being seen across the world

The comfortability and safety of my own life
Sits in the back of mind, rarely coming out to play
For others, their safety is dangling off a tightrope,
A finger away from falling into the depths

One in four women
One in nine men
10 million suffer
10 million too much

After a marriage full of hate, fear, and humiliation
Witnesses are brought to tell the truth as
Everything comes to a halt
It all comes down to this; who lied? 

Interruption, objection, hearsay
Years of being silent,
Depp is silenced once again
But now is the time to tell his story

Seeing toxicity since childhood left him bruised
The shadows of trauma followed him to his adulthood,
He didn’t have a voice then, but he has one now
In horror I listen to the audio clip playing at the end of testimony

“Tell them Johnny Depp, I, Johnny Depp, a man, 
I’m a victim too of domestic violence”
What did he say?
“Yes I am.”

 

Written by Jessica Mananquil | Photo by Georgy Rudakov, Unsplash

Jessica Mananquil is a Journalism major at Sierra College. She plans on transferring to San Francisco State University to pursue her interest in news and feature writing for fall 2022.

Bends and Banks: Communities, Water, and the American River

Bends and Banks: Communities, Water, and the American River, is a set of five stories produced by a team of journalist fellows in Spring, 2022. The team includes four student journalists: Madalyn Wright, Vontress Ortega, Katelyn Vengersammy, and Aviana Loveall. They were all awarded through the California Humanities “Emerging Journalist” Fellowship with the Journalism program at Sierra College.

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Beyond Meals: The Sierra College Food Pantry

The financial weight of groceries can cause stress for students and their families. The Sierra College Food Pantry was started as a labor of love by the late Student Life Campus Coordinator, Tim Haenny (1957-2017). Today students and staff carry on the legacy to make sure no student goes hungry. 

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Fast Food Fights Back

The year 2020 redefined the word, “essential.” Home essentials, health essentials, work essentials, but most notably essential workers. Though the Fight for 15 movements began in 2012, the COVD-19 pandemic brought a new wave of unionizing movements to fast-food chains across the nation. After years of unsafe working conditions, low wages, lack of accessible healthcare, sexual assault, sexism, and racism, fast-food workers of the Sacramento area are fighting back.

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Finding the Balance: College, Health, and the Gym

Many college students struggle to find a healthy balance in their academic lives. Between staying in shape by going to the gym and pursuing higher education, students will often compromise their living for schoolwork. It can feel like an impossible endeavor considering the amount of coursework being piled on students during the average college semester. But students can learn some simple truths of healthy living from professionals.

Exiting the center stage of the octagon, a professional Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter and full-time fitness coach training out of Rocklin CA, Orion “Galaxy” Cosce shares his knowledge of how to take care of your mind and body as a busy college student.

“It doesn’t matter how busy I am, I need to try to get at least one gallon of water a day, I need to be able to eat the proper nutrition.”

There is no doubt that finishing college coursework is important, but when it starts negatively affecting a student’s mental health to finish an assignment, it raises the question of how students can incorporate a healthier lifestyle into their schooling. The answer to this question is complicated and imperative on the individual, but if it was easy everyone would be doing it by motivating themselves to go to the gym.

Schoolwork and Health, Evaluating Priorities

Motivation is the keyword when students apply every ounce of energy into completing classwork. Many students are highly motivated in pursuing and attending college but at a cost. Common examples highlighted by the award-winning publication LiveScience found frequent health defects like sleep deprivation, depression and stress are present in dangerously high quantities among college students. And it’s no wonder students are having these health defects when everything, sometimes even eating, has to be put aside in order to finish an assignment.

A lot of kids, they, you know, survive off of like noodles and stuff like that, they start to eat only once a day…They’re not really getting the water intake that they need… they kind of lack on the sleep because they’re, you know, most kids are taking Ritalin to try to help them stay awake and do all their academic studies. But the problem is they’re actually taking a negative health turn,” Cosce said.

There needs to be a new evaluation of priorities. While turning in school work on time is important, sleep and nutrition are vital parts of a student’s success. The benefits of a healthier lifestyle aren’t just in a student’s physical well-being, but also a mental one. For example, the most common effect of sleep deprivation is a disruption in the brain’s ability to perform and carry out tasks such as studying for that upcoming exam. A healthier outlook to a student’s living would help their academics in the situation, not just get in the way.

These health defects are common enough that students have surely noticed them on their own, and some students reading this are probably experiencing them at this moment. So where are the solutions? Here is our professional fighter’s advice. 

Multiple Paths to A Healthy Lifestyle

How do you go to the gym when you are constantly busy? What exactly should I be doing at the gym or at home? Do I have to be there for hours? Students who may not be initiated in the land of exercise have all of these questions and more when they think of going to the gym. Cosce has answers to many of these questions: 

If your college has a gym, take one hour of your time, or 30 minutes of your time. If you’re doing a high-intensity workout, no more than 30 to 40 minutes. If you’re doing a strength program, no more than an hour to an hour and a half and literally, that’s all you need once a day, and you’ll feel a lot better and a lot healthier.”

So the expert fighter tells the average college student to start with thirty minutes a day, that’s the time needed to begin. What should a student be doing in those thirty minutes? Well, that’s the more personal part as every individual’s needs and health goals will be different. The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to the Gym goes down the list of times to go, what to wear, explanations of the machines in a typical gym, and even personal health conditions to consider when deciding to exercise.

Although the article presents material for beginners, it includes valuable information on specific machines and when to use them, as well as tips for any aspiring health nut. Almost everything is handed to you when analyzing this information, the next step is to apply these forms of guidance into action, and Cosce has lots of guidance on action.

You just want to get a good workout in and just find yourself a good area where you’re going to either A) have friends to go with you to help push you if you need that or, you know, maybe a potential personal trainer, or B) if you have that self-motivation already, you just got to remember, take 30 minutes to an hour every day to get that training session in.”

Orion Cosce training at the Urijah Faber UFC Gym in Rocklin CA, Nov. 12, 2020. Photo provided by Liana Cosce.

As a professional fighter, Cosce goes through the motions of training and exercising in preparation for a fight knowing that his health is imperative to his success. In the form of a role model, he wants students to be aware of the benefits of going to the gym as a whole, not just for the octagon.

He knows what it takes to achieve goals that at first seem out of reach, with each and every fight preparing him to move on to the next step when a new opponent appears. He applies the same principle to a college student’s time management and constant planning to prepare them for an upcoming assignment.

It takes more than the average work of consistently going to the gym to be a fighter like Cosce, but not everyone has to train or religiously go to the gym. It’s important to take care of both your mind and body by practicing good habits now, such as having a proper sleep schedule and eating three meals a day.

Cosce lives by a schedule that is best suited for him to eventually knock out any opponent that comes his way. From proper sleeping habits to meal prepping, he takes calculated steps in preparation for upcoming fights. As a personal trainer, he helps others achieve individual goals by guiding them to success.

As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Only students themselves can make the change to a healthier lifestyle. Remembering to eat and sleep are necessities to continue living a happy and hopefully, less stressful life through college. Cosce hopes that his example can help others looking for success in health and college achieve their goals.

 

Editor’s Note

If you’re looking to improve your own health while enrolled at Sierra, the College has athletic facilities to support its many student teams and they typically have open hours for general student use. There are also classes to support holistic learning such as yoga and meditation that are offered every term. Find them offered online and on-ground in the class schedule. Turn to the Kinesiology department and the course listings under “KIN” for courses like these along with weight-lifting, dance, and others. Students have access to health services through the Health Services department that offers support for mental, emotional, and physical health. Sierra College provides assistance with immunizations, injury evaluation, mental health resources including counseling, as well as food aid to support a healthy life-style through the on-campus food pantry. Most students also qualify for CalFresh and a Wolverine Meal Deal.

 

Angel Chavez is a Journalism Major at Sierra College from Rocklin. He plans to transfer in 2022 and continue in the Major.

Written by Angel Chavez | Featured Photo by Katelyn Vengersammy