COLUMN
‘COOG RADIO PUT MY LIFE ON TRACK’
Story and photos by Cynthia Isabel Zelaya Ordoñez
I
decided to enroll in college in spring of 2017, following a year of bohemian travel, volunteering, and true rest after years of sleep deprivation and overachieving.
No money or connections meant my path to a career in journalism would have to be through my own merits. So what was the first step? Google said it was to get a reel, and the best place to start was with your student television channel. So off to CoogTV I went. The experience was fine. Certainly not the training I’d need to prepare 6
COOGLIFE // January 2022
How joining an on campus organization helped Cynthia gain skills and life long friendships she may never have had otherwise.
me for an internship (let alone the real world), but an okay mimic. Instead of hanging out in the studio with the other members of CoogTV, I found myself camping out in the lobby more and more, drawn to Coog Radio and the energy of the people laughing within. They took their lunches at the table I sat at with my
laptop. Small talk ensued for a few weeks. One day, a Filipino with a unicycle invited me to pho and coffee with him and some of the Coog Radio staff. I accepted, and a friendship was born. The staff was kind, wholesome and pleasantly eclectic. It felt like I’d stepped into a movie with characters so diverse and well-rounded, they almost felt like industry plants. In our free time, we did things people only do in Smashing Pumpkins music videos. Singing on bridges at midnight, attending a ‘small house show’
