I can’t decide whether we have been kicked while we were already down, or if we were actually flying high and then got stomped into the ground repeatedly. Either way, some of us staffers here at The Collegian are feeling a little bruised and discouraged right now.

It’s ironic, because this year JDM took a turn for the better. The redesigned major has been praised as forward-thinking and great for the future, and many seniors (including myself) are jealous that they don’t get to see what happens next with the program. Our advisors have earned a huge amount of respect from myself and others for their efforts and encouragement.

Unfortunately, respect seems to be the only thing holding up in CFA. The Collegian’s computers continue to crash, refuse to start and lose more work than they save. The phrase, “save and save often,” is overly used and rarely helps.

The Collegian also finally acquired its very own camera this year and while that should be a good thing, it feels more like a punishment. Now that we actually have a piece of equipment that isn’t from the 1900s, we don’t have enough space for more than four pictures per file. Apparently, the pictures are just too big, too perfect and too 2011 for the leash that is our space allotment on the university’s server. (No, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?) If we download all the photos we literally cannot save the actual newspaper layout. Our leash seems tighter than ever, despite our hardcore efforts to expand and better ourselves.

Obviously, this makes work flow and spirits run at an all time low. So when the staff found out that 14 percent of our budget had been cut, but we hadn’t been made aware of it until the end of September, after we had already printed four papers in four weeks, the emotions ran high.

Not only do we rarely sleep, eat or get homework done on Mondays and Tuesdays (in case you don’t know, those are the two nights that we put our eight-page paper together for that week), but we get paid about as much as the illegal immigrants babysitting for wealthy New York families get paid. And no, that isn’t a stereotype. Haven’t you watched “Law and Order”?

With not much in the way of a paycheck, we really do this for two reasons: it looks good on our résumés, unlike the JDM students that don’t participate in any of the relevant activities on campus, and we enjoy it. The joy is becoming harder and harder to find recently, though.

The most ironic thing about our budget being slashed is that now we have to pay out-of-pocket to go to our awards banquets…awards banquets that we are going to because we are an award-winning college newspaper. I remember the first time I decided that my university should cut an award-winning program’s budget that made the school look good.

We still try to find the silver lining. At least we got a grant that gave everyone free laundry now, right? We will probably cover that as a relevant story and put it in this week’s paper, since we can only afford to print three more times this semester. As one of my dear friends, Tim Hawk, said the other day: “I think I’ll settle down tonight and enjoy my award-winning laundry…oh, wait….”