Cool Cat: Addie Adkins
Interview by Gabby Kutch | Photos by Addie Adkins
Studying for an exam until 3 a.m. Turning in an essay 20 minutes before the deadline. Going to the library to meet with your peers for a group project. These are all some time-consuming aspects of being a college student. Sometimes, school can take up so much time that it can feel as though you have no free time at all. So imagine having all the responsibilities of a student while also being an editor for the school newspaper and a mother of two.
Addie Adkins was a returning college student at 31 years old. She graduated from Central Washington Univeristy in the summer of 2022, earning her English major with a minor in communications. Now, she is a first year graduate student at Gonzaga University. Her hard work and dedication both in and outside the classroom have inspired us to highlight her as a Cool Cat.
What's your role in the Observer?
So spring quarter, I am the orientation editor, which is like our summer issue that's out all summer. And then I'm also the assistant copy editor. So the copy editing job is like, I go through all of the stories and I read them all and I edit for grammar, readability and AP style. And the orientation issue I kind of mentioned before, it's our summer issue of the Observer that gets printed for all of the summer orientations that are done during the summer. So yeah, that just kind of counts as our summer issues since we don't have classes during summer.
What is a typical daily schedule for you?
So it really depends on the day. I have two kids. One is 12, and so she's in 6th grade, and the other is four, so he's in preschool. And my daughter is not a morning person at all. So it's a lot of cajoling her out of bed. We have to like, prod her with a stick honestly. But my son is a real early bird. So he gets up at like 5:30, and I am not a morning person at all. So my day starts really early and I'm just getting the kids ready. My daughter goes to school, Monday through Friday, but my son only goes to school three a week. So just a lot of getting things ready, getting them off to the places that they need to go. And then I sit down and typically start doing my schoolwork. I'm on campus twice a week, and it's the days that my son goes to school. So when I'm home, he's also home. So it's a lot of sitting down for 10 minutes and doing this and then getting called off by the toddler to go do whatever he needs me to do. And just a lot of that. Just constantly starting one thing, stopping for a second, starting one thing, stopping for a second.
Would you say that your student experience is different from your peers because you're a mom?
I would say so, just because even if I was living on campus I would still have to, you know, in order to participate in a lot of the things that my peers participate in, I would have to find childcare or I'd have to put [my son] in the student daycare and you know, it's just extra monthly expenses and things like that. So I feel like there's no way that my experience wouldn't be different, you know, but everybody's is kind of different no matter what.
How do you deal with stress?
That's a really tough question actually, because I don't deal with stress very well. I have a couple of mental illnesses and I have an anxiety disorder that I take medication for and it can bother me sometimes. So recently how I've dealt with stress is I've had to really like to step back from myself and say, You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to, you know, you need to get out of that mindset that you have to do everything all at once in order to make everything perfect for everybody else and yourself. So I think that's really helped. Other than that, I do a lot of planning. I have like three planners, one actual planner, and then I use my phone planner and I use the outlook planner. Oh and there’s Canvas too. Maybe four planners. But yeah, it's just it's a lot of planning. It's a lot of trying to make time for myself and for my kids and stuff like that.
Is the stress of being a parent similar to or different from the stress of being like a student?
I feel like I think it's just a different kind of stress. It's kind of like comparing the stress of being a college student and the stress of being in the working world with a professional job or something like that. Being a student and being a parent is almost more similar than being in the professional world just because in the professional world, you get a chance to stop. You know, I mean, when you go home, you get to go home. When you're a college student, you get to go home, but sometimes there's homework or schoolwork or projects or it almost feels like you're always on and that's the same thing with being a parent you are always on. You don't have days off and if you do want a day off, you have to plan for it. And you have to know even when you do plan for it, you're still stressed about what are my kids doing? How are they doing? How are they acting for the other people that I'm having watching them and a lot of stress comes from, like, Am I doing the right thing? Are they gonna grow up to be as messed up as me but like there's just always those fears and those stressors because you don't really know what's gonna happen for the future and, and they're their own people too. So you don't know how they're going to respond to the environment outside of them and stuff like that, because how I would respond is probably different than how they're gonna respond, and so on and so forth. So, just that
How do your kids feel about having a mom that goes to school like they do?
My son hates it. My son absolutely hates it. He's always telling me “Mom, don't do work” or “don't go to school” or “don't do this” because he's just a real mama's boy. So he just wants me around all the time. Not that he even talks to me when I'm around, but he just wants me there and present and next to him, right? My daughter thinks it's pretty cool. Because she is in sixth grade. So she's, you know, getting more homework and more projects. And you know, I'm sure you remember that time between Fifth and Sixth grade where like, okay, so more stuff coming onto my plate where stuff is getting assigned to me and gearing you up for middle school and high school. A couple of weeks ago even she had a day off and she's like, “Oh, I have the day off mom. Don't you wish you had the day off?” You bet I do. I really wish. But yeah, so she thinks it's pretty cool. She likes to rub it in my face sometimes. Saying “I have it easier than you” and I’m like, you're right, you do, but you have another world coming.
So what made you want to take on the responsibilities of being on the Observer as well as being a parent and a student?
So I transferred here from Wenatchee Valley College, and I took a copy editing class that first quarter that I was here before that copy editing class. I had no idea that there was even student media on campus. At the end of that copy editing class, the teacher who was the advisor for the observer at the time, Cynthia Mitchell. She sent me an email after the class. She's like, “Hey, you did really great on your final. We would really love you over at the copy desk on the Observer. It'll work for your practicum major or your practicum requirements for your major.” And I was like, oh cool, let's do that, let's get that out of the way. And I've been there since. So, you know, it just kind of felt natural. When I first started on the observer, there were two people on the copy desk, the copy desk chief and then me for like, I think there were 20 reporters, maybe not. There may have only been like 15 but there were a lot of reporters and there were only two of us. So I ended up having to do a lot of copy editing hours when I first started anyways, so it kind of just felt natural to, you know, keep adding on and moving up into the leadership positions and stuff like that. And then once I got into it, it was really fun. It's really fun editing. I have a lot of fun editing. I didn't think that I would love a lot of editing, because I hate doing peer reviews and stuff like that. Who doesn't? But it's just a lot of fun and so, I just wanted to keep doing it.
What made you want to come back to college?
That's a really, really long story. So the shortest summary that I can do, is I wasn't happy where I was working. And I thought to myself, I need to have a backup plan. I originally returned to college to get an accounting degree. And some stuff happened with the online degree because I was working when I first went back to college. I can't believe that I was working while I was going to college. It was so much, but I managed to get through it. But the degree that I was going for the online classes weren't being offered. I was like, I can't extend this out. So I switched over to a general transfer degree. And then when I got accepted to central I decided to just completely forego the business side and the accounting side and go to what my passion was, which is language arts and writing and stuff like that.