Monday, Jan. 8, 2018 Vol. 118, No. 77 apply online at jobs.psu.edu HIRING Flexible Hours Free Book Loan Program Competitive Wages THE PENN STATER HOTEL AND CONFERENCE CENTER Apply online today at LionLine.psu.edu By Allison Moody The Daily Collegian On Dec. 25, 2015, I spent part of the night in my room, crying. Christmas is my favorite holi- day. I had spent quality time with family and had received more gifts and love than I had ever asked for. So why was I so unhappy? I bereted myself in the silence of my room. How could I be so inconsiderate? So ungrateful? Then it hit me – depression was creeping back into my life. I was first diagnosed during my junior year of high school, but nine months of therapy landed me in a much better place. Until that moment, sob- bing into my Christmas sweat- er, I thought I was fine. Over two years have now passed since I relapsed. I have seen two therapists, been pre- scribed two antidepressants and suffered through countless mental breakdowns and crying fits. But I’m still here, fighting alongside thousands of Penn State students facing similar struggles. Depression makes it extreme- ly hard to find motivation to complete small mundane tasks, much less work on your dete- riorating mental health. College further complicates things, as students often lack the time, en- ergy and money required to get help. Scattered around the inter- net are copious self-help web- sites and forums with theories and tactics to seemingly cure your depression and anxiety for good. To test some of them, I spent one of the last – and most hectic – weeks of the fall semes- ter sampling different coping mechanisms that are free and college-student friendly. Physical activity I have never been athleti- cally inclined. Although I do not particularly enjoy the sweaty feeling of pure exhaustion, I have pushed myself through enough workouts to know that it positively impacts my mental health. “Aerobic exercises, includ- ing jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening and danc- ing, have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression,” ac- cording to a 2006 article in “The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychology.” So I set out to the White Build- ing early one evening to attend Power Remix. This is the only workout I have ever enjoyed, and I was looking forward to go- ing back for the first time that semester. When I arrived, I could not find the room in which the class was held. I was more anxious with each passing minute, feeling like ev- ery gym-goer was silently judg- ing me as they passed through the turnstiles. After asking the front-desk attendants nearly five separate times where the classroom was, I realized I had looked at the wrong class schedule – the one I was looking for was already tak- ing place across campus. This whole experience shot my anxiety through the roof. I wanted to work out, but not if it was going to be a detriment to my mental health, the very thing I was trying to improve. Instead of giving up complete- ly, I went on a walk instead. It was dusk at this point, and the sky was illuminated with the vibrant colors of a fall sunset. I meandered my way around campus, eventually making it to the Arboretum, a place I had never visited, but always wished to see. Although I did not get in the workout I intended, the walk was a step in the right direction. Workouts, no matter how small, have helped clear my mind in the past and I will definitely be trying this coping mechanism again. Quality time with friends When I am stressed, upset or anything in between, I run into the arms of my closest friends. This has benefitted my mental health in the past and for good reason. According to the Mayo Clinic, friendship can increase happi- ness, sense of belonging and purpose, self-confidence and self-worth. I was feeling especially anx- ious the day I decided to spend time with my friends Oliva and Hailey, and for no reason at all. I could barely focus on the tasks at hand and at times could physically feel the blood rushing through my veins. When anxiety kicks in, it can be difficult to do anything, as everything feels off kilter. Even though I love Olivia and Hai- ley dearly and am extremely comfortable with them, going through with my plans with them proved challenging. Once I arrived at their apart- ment, though, my anxiety slowly melted away. We vented about our days and reminisced on ri- diculous memories as I cuddled up with Trident, Hailey’s 3-year- old pit bull, on the perfectly worn-in leather couch. Being with them in a new environ- ment distracted me from my own thoughts and allowed me to relax in a way I couldn’t have otherwise. Although the friends I spent time with were not aware of my situation that day, they are more than understanding of my men- tal illnesses. I have found that it is para- mount to my mental health to surround myself with people who just “get it” when the out- side world often does not. Good sleeping and eating habits For years, doctors have said a good diet and sleeping schedule is crucial to a person’s overall health. New research suggests that diet affects one’s mental health as much as their physical health, according to WebMD. Websites like Mental Health America specifically outline dietary needs of those who struggle with mental health, including tips like avoiding an excess of caffeine as “it can trig- ger panic attacks in people who have anxiety disorders.” I have long doubted the mental health benefits of eating healthily, as dieting often increases my irri- tability, but I figured I’d give it another shot. When the day of the diet ar- rived, I awoke feeling well rested and refreshed. I usually average seven hours of sleep a night, but function best on eight or nine. I had slept a full eight hours, as I did not have any morning class- es, which always starts my day off on the right foot. For the diet portion of the day, I followed a free custom- ized program through Under Armour’s MyFitnessPal app. I have recently wanted to shed a few pounds and figured that this day could jumpstart that process. Taking into consideration my age, height, weight and goals, the app allowed 1,200 calories for the day. I typed in and en- tered each food into the app as I ate it, which would subsequent- ly subtract that food’s caloric value from the total. Tracking your caloric intake does not necessarily correlate with eating healthy, so I made it a goal to eat right throughout the day, as well. After lunch, I was pretty satisfied but hit a wall during a three hour lecture See HealtH, Page 2.
Transcript
Monday, Jan. 8, 2018Vol. 118, No. 77
apply online at jobs.psu.edu
HIRINGFlexible Hours
Free Book Loan Program
Competitive Wages
THE PENN STATERH O T E L A N D C O N F E R E N C E C E N T E R
Apply online today at LionLine.psu.edu
By Allison Moody The Daily Collegian
On Dec. 25, 2015, I spent part of the night in my room, crying.
Christmas is my favorite holi-day. I had spent quality time with family and had received more gifts and love than I had ever asked for.
So why was I so unhappy?I bereted myself in the silence
of my room. How could I be so inconsiderate? So ungrateful?
Then it hit me – depression was creeping back into my life.
I was first diagnosed during my junior year of high school, but nine months of therapy landed me in a much better place. Until that moment, sob-bing into my Christmas sweat-er, I thought I was fine.
Over two years have now passed since I relapsed. I have seen two therapists, been pre-scribed two antidepressants and suffered through countless mental breakdowns and crying fits. But I’m still here, fighting alongside thousands of Penn State students facing similar struggles.
Depression makes it extreme-ly hard to find motivation to complete small mundane tasks, much less work on your dete-riorating mental health. College further complicates things, as students often lack the time, en-ergy and money required to get help.
Scattered around the inter-net are copious self-help web-sites and forums with theories and tactics to seemingly cure your depression and anxiety for good. To test some of them, I spent one of the last – and most hectic – weeks of the fall semes-ter sampling different coping mechanisms that are free and college-student friendly.
Physical activityI have never been athleti-
cally inclined. Although I do not
particularly enjoy the sweaty feeling of pure exhaustion, I have pushed myself through enough workouts to know that it positively impacts my mental health.
“Aerobic exercises, includ-ing jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, gardening and danc-ing, have been proved to reduce anxiety and depression,” ac-cording to a 2006 article in “The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychology.”
So I set out to the White Build-ing early one evening to attend Power Remix. This is the only workout I have ever enjoyed, and I was looking forward to go-ing back for the first time that semester.
When I arrived, I could not find the room in which the class was held.
I was more anxious with each passing minute, feeling like ev-ery gym-goer was silently judg-ing me as they passed through the turnstiles.
After asking the front-desk attendants nearly five separate times where the classroom was, I realized I had looked at the wrong class schedule – the one I was looking for was already tak-ing place across campus.
This whole experience shot my anxiety through the roof. I wanted to work out, but not if it was going to be a detriment to my mental health, the very thing I was trying to improve.
Instead of giving up complete-ly, I went on a walk instead. It was dusk at this point, and the sky was illuminated with the vibrant colors of a fall sunset. I meandered my way around campus, eventually making it to the Arboretum, a place I had never visited, but always wished to see.
Although I did not get in the workout I intended, the walk was a step in the right direction. Workouts, no matter how small,
have helped clear my mind in the past and I will definitely be trying this coping mechanism again.
Quality time with friendsWhen I am stressed, upset or
anything in between, I run into the arms of my closest friends. This has benefitted my mental health in the past and for good reason.
According to the Mayo Clinic, friendship can increase happi-ness, sense of belonging and purpose, self-confidence and self-worth.
I was feeling especially anx-ious the day I decided to spend time with my friends Oliva and Hailey, and for no reason at all. I could barely focus on the tasks at hand and at times could physically feel the blood rushing through my veins.
When anxiety kicks in, it can be difficult to do anything, as everything feels off kilter. Even though I love Olivia and Hai-ley dearly and am extremely comfortable with them, going through with my plans with them proved challenging.
Once I arrived at their apart-ment, though, my anxiety slowly melted away. We vented about our days and reminisced on ri-diculous memories as I cuddled up with Trident, Hailey’s 3-year-old pit bull, on the perfectly worn-in leather couch. Being with them in a new environ-ment distracted me from my own thoughts and allowed me to relax in a way I couldn’t have otherwise.
Although the friends I spent time with were not aware of my situation that day, they are more than understanding of my men-tal illnesses.
I have found that it is para-mount to my mental health to surround myself with people who just “get it” when the out-side world often does not.
Good sleeping and eating
habitsFor years, doctors have said a
good diet and sleeping schedule is crucial to a person’s overall health. New research suggests that diet affects one’s mental health as much as their physical health, according to WebMD.
Websites like Mental Health America specifically outline dietary needs of those who struggle with mental health, including tips like avoiding an excess of caffeine as “it can trig-ger panic attacks in people who have anxiety disorders.” I have long doubted the mental health benefits of eating healthily, as dieting often increases my irri-tability, but I figured I’d give it another shot.
When the day of the diet ar-rived, I awoke feeling well rested and refreshed. I usually average seven hours of sleep a night, but function best on eight or nine. I had slept a full eight hours, as I did not have any morning class-es, which always starts my day off on the right foot.
For the diet portion of the day, I followed a free custom-ized program through Under Armour’s MyFitnessPal app. I have recently wanted to shed a few pounds and figured that this day could jumpstart that process.
Taking into consideration my age, height, weight and goals, the app allowed 1,200 calories for the day. I typed in and en-tered each food into the app as I ate it, which would subsequent-ly subtract that food’s caloric value from the total.
Tracking your caloric intake does not necessarily correlate with eating healthy, so I made it a goal to eat right throughout the day, as well. After lunch, I was pretty satisfied but hit a wall during a three hour lecture
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with each rumble of my stomach and did not have the normal ability to eat what I wished, which only worsened the situation. Overall, track-ing my calories and eating healthy added stress to my already hectic day.
Looking back, I may have jumped in a little too quickly to see any positive results. Though I was hungry – and therefore irritable – for most of the day, I felt a sense of ac-complishment at the end of it, which made it seem worth it.
MindfulnessWhen I began struggling
with anxiety and depression, one of the first things my therapist taught me was how to practice mindfulness.
Each and every time I go through a mindfulness prac-tice I feel exponentially bet-ter, but I forget to do it as often as I should. I used this week to make mindfulness a habit, and it worked wonders for me.
Mindfulness is a practice one can do anywhere and anytime. It is simply center-ing yourself in the exact mo-ment you are in – taking a mental break and focusing on your immediate situation and surroundings.
When my mind was start-ing to spiral into chaos in the middle of a busy shift at work, I paused and asked myself a few simple questions.
Where am I in this exact moment? What can I see? What can I hear? What can I feel?
“I am standing in the kitch-en of South Food District, in Redifer Commons, on Penn State’s campus in State Col-lege. Cartons of eggs, bags of diced white onions, red pep-pers and cheese are sprawled
across the table in front of me, prepared and combined into western scrambled eggs in pans a few feet away. I can hear the sizzling of the grill and chattering of students in the dining hall as I grip the cold stainless steel table through my medical grade plastic gloves.”
Using your senses to ground yourself may sound simple, but it can make a huge difference to someone whose mind is constantly wandering to negative spac-es.
When the overwhelming stress of the week got to me, I snapped myself into mind-fulness mode. Afterward, I was much better equipped to handle exactly what I needed to in that moment.
Final ResultsThe process I embarked
on this week was challeng-ing – but enlightening – as I learned so much about my-self and what works for my own mental health.
Quality time with friends and mindfulness got me through one of the tough-est weeks of my semester, aided by a peaceful night’s sleep and some exercise – all of which I aim to keep up throughout the New Year.
What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. Each individual must go on their own journey to find what makes the biggest difference in their mental health, and what just isn’t worth keeping around.
If you try one of these things in the first few weeks of the semester and it doesn’t do much for you that is com-pletely OK.
I encourage you to not be discouraged, but rather to keep discovering ways to improve your health and wellbeing.
The beginning of every semester is similar to New Year’s, as students have the opportunity to set new goals and redeem themselves from the mistakes of previ-ous semesters.
Yet, every semester, many students continue to find themselves stressed over class, work, extracurricular clubs and activities, as well as finding time for a social life.
While they may genuinely desire to resolve stress and the factors that enable it, stress is ultimately inevi-table.
That being said, there are many ways to avoid stress and absolve from it.
Harvard Health suggests remaining positive as a way to avoid stress — in other words, mind over matter.
Just by simply reminding yourself that regardless of how stressed or concerned you may be, everything will be fine and you will certainly have enough time to com-plete all that you have to do.
Similarly, it is important to laugh and do so as often as possible. Laughter has been proven to raise good choles-terol (HDL), while reducing stress levels, according to Har-vard Health.
Perhaps have a tab of your fa-vorite Netflix stand-up comedy routine open while doing work. It will be there when you need to destress.
It is also important to give your brain a rest in stressful situa-tions. Harvard Health recom-mends exercising often, as doing so releases endorphins, a kind of brain chemical that improves one’s mood.
Exercise has cardiovascular benefits, as well. While you may not want to stop studying to go to the gym, it may be beneficial to take a break and come back re-juvenated than to continue work-ing with an exhausted brain from time to time.
According to the Chopra Cen-ter, a wellness center aiming to “bring wisdom of meditation, yoga and Ayurveda into the mod-ern world,” you should be grate-ful for all that you have in your life and how lucky you are to be stressed.
Simply taking time to be grate-ful can reduce stress and stimu-late a new method of thinking. Think of a fond memory with friends or look at old photos that remind you of good times.
This little act will help you to
recognize the positive things that happen every day — even amid the most stressful times.
It’s true: Misery loves com-pany. WebMD says when you find yourself struggling to finish an assignment or are concerned about an exam, you should reach out to a friend.
This is when you might need support the most. Those around you are often ready and willing to offer the support that you need to cross the finish line.
Take a deep breath. According to the Chopra Center, mindful meditation can not only decrease your stress levels, but improve your overall health.
It lowers blood pressure in ad-dition to relieving stress and anx-iety. Stress has a tendency to en-able a “fight or flight” mentality. Meditating allows you to forget your stressors and makes it easi-er to work by relaxing your mind. Here is one guide to mediating.
Know your stressors and plan for them. Everyone stresses dif-ferently and is stressed by differ-ent things.
It is important to understand what exactly triggers it for you. In doing so, you will be more like-ly to avoid those situations.
An all-nighter may seem like the solution, but it may actually be doing you more
harm than good. The American Psychological Association notes that a lack of sleep alters one’s memory, judgement and mood.
While cutting out sleep allows for more time to study and com-plete assignments, it prevents the mind and body from the ben-efits, like memory consolidation and muscle repair. According to the APA, pulling an all-nighter af-fects concentration, appetite and can even cause more stress.
To prevent an all-nighter, plan ahead to ensure that your sched-ule allows for enough time to complete all assignments, study and sleep.
Ultimately, the key to a stress-free semester is planning ahead. More often than not, students are stressed when working under a time constraint.
There are so many more hours in a day than it may seem and plenty of time to get everything done.
Utilize every minute of every hour each day to get the most out of it.
A strict schedule will ensure that stress is avoided and work is completed, while still allowing for time to take a breath.
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YouTube, Logan Paul and how not to handle insensitive content
Matt Martell Opinion Page Editor
Eight days ago, many of us welcomed 2018 with a set of lofty goals to accomplish sometime this year.
Resolutions have become an integral part of the annual tradi-tion of ringing in the New Year, and we want to make them count.
With today marking the start of a new semester, The Daily Collegian has created a list of resolutions for the Penn State community to try and achieve in the coming four months.
We’re not going to hound you to lose weight or obtain a specif-ic GPA this semester. Good for you if you do, but that’s none of our business.
Instead, our proposed resolu-tions are intended as a list of challenges that, if we complete them, will lead to the overall improvement of our community.
Open your eyes.No, we don’t mean waking up
in the morning — though that’s always a plus.
In a culture currently ridden with divisive rhetoric and polar-izing ideologies, it can be hard to remove ourselves from the ever-present dissension. So why run from it? Instead, we implore you to understand why people think the way they think and do the things they do.
As is the case with most reso-lutions, unifying a community is no easy task.
But Penn State provides a conducive environment to foster this understanding. Our univer-sity includes more than 40,000 undergraduate students from 47
different states and at least 50 countries, according to college-factual.com.
Each time you walk campus, you’re bound to meet somebody with different perspectives based on where they’re from and how they were raised. We challenge you to talk to them, listen to them and learn from them. Then, recognize their dif-ferences but focus on how they’re similar to you. Under-stand what you have in common with them.
Experience Penn State.While this second challenge
may sound like the intro to a
mailed pamphlet you received from admissions, look past its corny slogan and think about what you’ve done since you came here.
Have you attended a sporting event other than a football game? If so, which sports.
Have you seen a play pro-duced by Penn State Thespians or No Refund Theatre? How about a performance featuring any of Penn State’s dance organizations?
Each of these events offers us an opportunity to support one another, broaden our interests and unify us as a community. Plus, they’re a lot of fun.
Learn from mistakes.This semester could be a
monumental one considering the implications it could have on Penn State moving forward.
With the changes to greek life and all that still could come from the ongoing Beta Theta Pi case, we have to be mindful of what actually happened: A Penn State student, Timothy Piazza, died in a pledging incident.
Regardless of all the specifics and what will be decided in court, we cannot deny the horri-ble truth of what occurred on that night nearly one year ago. And whatever consequences come from this tragedy, we must understand that how we respond to them directly affects our overall Penn State commu-nity.
There’s always more we can do to improve, but if we address these three challenges, Penn State will undoubtedly be a bet-ter place for all of us in the new semester.
If we address these three challenges, Penn State will undoubtedly be a better place.
Recent controversy surround-ing YouTube star Logan Paul’s trip to Japan, which was docu-
mented with a vlog series titled “To-kyo Adventures,” brings more to light than just Paul’s judgement.
On Dec. 31 Paul published a video on YouTube titled, “We found a dead body in the Japa-
nese Suicide Forest…” which contained footage of what ap-peared to be a dead body with only the face blurred out.
“Yo, are you alive?” Paul called out to the body. “Are you f***ing with us?”
The body’s hands were purple, which Paul said meant the man killed himself that morning.
Paul said he wasn’t going to monetize the video, and put in-formation for the American Soci-ety for Suicide Prevention in the video’s description.
“Suicide is not a joke,” Paul said. “Depression and mental ill-ness are not a joke.”
It’s not a joke, but you pub-lished it online with little regard to its sensitivity. What does that say it means to you, Mr. Paul?
I think the title says it all. The body they found was the actual namesake of the video, the atten-tion-grabber.
“This is not clickbait,” Paul said in the intro to the video. “Now
with that said: Buckle the f*** up, because you’re never gonna see a video like this again!”
I sure hope not. Paul knew a title like that would be consid-ered clickbait. He knew it would garner in views, and even with a video that isn’t monetized, hits on a video are just as important, if not more so than the money that specific video makes. Clickbait or not, the title, the body of a man who had taken his own life, was used for publicity.
Paul has since apologized on multiple occasions following im-mediate, harsh backlash.
However, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. While technically just an anecdote, it proved to be true amid the storm of criticism.
On Jan. 3, Paul’s subscriber count increased by 17,111 new subscribers. The following day, 81,114 additional people signed up to his channel, according to data site Vid Stats X.
His apology video also brought in more viewers than his average of 6 million per vlog, racking up 28 million views alone.
But the root of the problem goes deeper.
As per a statement, YouTube reaffirmed its stance on “violent or gory content posted in a shock-ing, sensational or disrespectful manner.”
Paul’s money comes from a va-riety of sources, one of them be-ing his clothing line, but by far the
most important and influential audience to please is his viewer base. As long as his viewers are pleased, he will continue to make money on other videos, despite this monstrous blunder.
This is where we need to look to YouTube. Paul’s partnership with YouTube is what allows him to di-rectly generate revenue from his videos. He can manually turn off monetization for specific videos, as he did with the video in ques-tion, but that doesn’t mean he won’t make money from his other videos.
Different videos from the same trip, which haven’t been removed, show all sorts of bigoted buf-foonery, including Paul running around screaming in a rice farm-er’s hat and kimono, purchasing a GameBoy Color from a market stall, smashing it and trying to get a refund, calling it “mucho broken-o.” If that wasn’t enough, he dressed up as Pikachu and threw Pokéballs at passersby and intervening police officers.
How did he pay for this insult-ing “adventure”? A lot of it was thanks to the money he made on YouTube.
Posting a video of a corpse brought his channel into the pub-lic eye, but had it not, the rest of his harassment during this trip probably would’ve gone under the radar for those who don’t already follow him.
The thing is, people like Paul will never actually be “fired” be-
cause their revenue depends on their audience and their audience depends on accessi-bility. Paul has the right to say whatever he wants on his own platform, but on YouTube, he shouldn’t get off with a smack on the wrist and continue to monetize future videos. The ac-cessibility is still there.
A TV show would be taken off the air if it got this much controversy, but YouTube will continue to fund Paul’s future shenanigans, and leave the gate open to future similar in-stances.
It’s hard to say whether Lo-gan Paul will actually learn from this, but as it stands, there’s nothing stopping him from coming back and doing literally the exact same thing, as long as there are people to watch it.
YouTube’s “child-friendly” filters failed to catch this and the only action the company has taken beyond releasing a statement was to take the of-fending video down.
At what point does YouTube take it upon itself to step in and make an effort to prevent it from happening again?
Brian Cunningham is a sophomore majoring in broadcast journalism and is a columnist for The Daily Col-legian. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @BrianC1785.
Cunningham
SPoRTS
By Jack R. HirshThe Daily Collegian
One of the top tight ends in the recruit-ing class of 2014 was absolutely lost at his first collegiate practice.
Then-Penn State tight ends coach John Donovan told his position group to get into their three-point stances to start practice.
Mike Gesicki didn’t know what to do.“Is anyone going to teach me how to do
this?” he said.A four-star recruit, Gesicki assembled
quite a receiving résumé at Southern High School in New Jersey, amassing 1,817 yards on 103 catches to be the team’s all-time leading receiver.
He was recruited as both a wide receiv-er and a tight end, but at 6-foot-5 and 236 pounds, his measurables compared better to a prototypical tight end, rather than a pure outside receiver. But he played wide receiver in high school, and because of that, he wasn’t sure why he was looked at as such a good tight end.
The embarrassment that day had to have left its mark. The sixth-ranked tight end in the country, per 247Sports, didn’t know how to line up in one of the most ba-sic stances of the position.
“I didn’t know anything personally about how to play tight end and the stance,” Ge-sicki said at Big Ten Media Days this sum-mer. “I was kind of starting from scratch.”
Because of his size, head coach James Franklin said he never thought of playing Gesicki at wide receiver.
Gesicki ended up playing for the Nit-tany Lions as a true freshman and then became the Nittany Lions starter ahead of his sophomore year. He was excited for the opportunity to have a breakout year.
“That really didn’t happen for him,” Franklin said.
He suffered through drop problems and eventually lost the starting gig.
Then in 2016, he had the breakout he wanted, becoming one of the best tight ends in the country as Penn State rose back into the national spotlight with a Big Ten Championship and an 11-win season.
His journey came to an end after Penn State’s 35-28 win over Washington in the Fiesta Bowl. His future is bright with a strong chance of being taken in the early rounds of the upcoming NFL draft.
Despite all the ups and downs of his career, Gesicki said there’s n o t h -ing he’d like to have back.
“I wouldn’t change anything that I have gone through in my Penn State career,” Gesicki said.
“My journey at Penn State is one I’ll remember forever.”
Multi-sport starWhile work on the gridiron took up Gesicki’s days in the fall before college,
it wasn’t the same year-round dedication that he exhibits today.
Like many other talented athletes, he didn’t limit himself to just one sport. He was Southern’s all-time leading scorer in basketball with over 1,800 points.
But perhaps his best sport in high school was volleyball.
As a middle blocker, Gesicki led the Rams to back-to-back New Jersey state championships in the sport during his junior and senior seasons. He was also named Boys Volleyball Player of the Year in those seasons by the Star-Ledger.
He ended his high school career with 987 kills and 449 blocks.
Those numbers and accolades attracted the attention of Penn State men’s volley-ball coach Mark Pavlik.
Gesicki said Pavlik reached out to him in his sophomore year, before the Player of the Year honors and state titles, asking if he had interest in play-ing past high school.
He hadn’t yet begun being heavily recruit-ed for football and Pavlik saw traits in the physical speci-men that he said weren’t teachable.
“From the little we saw on video tape here, he was a great, explosive athlete,” Pavlik said. “Good jumper. Truly aggres-sive, but yet under control. And I think that’s the thing you don’t see… Mike knew when to throttle back.”
However, Pavlik was at a disadvantage. Men’s volleyball is only allotted 4.5 schol-arship slots per program, meaning, Pavlik said, he could offer Gesicki only a 40 percent scholar- ship at best.
At the same time, Gesicki was being recruited to play basketball at Buck- nell and even visited the program. When the Penn State foot-ball team showed i n t e r e s t , he decided to pursue f o o t b a l l . He received a full s c h o l a r -ship.
He now spends most of his time on foot- ball, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about play- ing one of his other s p o r t s
from time to time.
“Obviously, playing those
sports for so long growing up,
it’s just natural,” Gesicki said. “Espe-
cially in the winter time when we have winter work-
outs and lifting. You turn on the TV and see basketball or
the advertisements outside the Bryce Jordan Center. You think about it.”
This year, Gesicki will have more than just normal winter workouts as he’ll be training for the NFL Draft after earning his degree in the fall of 2017.
He’s in for a huge pay day with the potential to be drafted as early as the second round of the draft, according to some experts. That’s a pay day Pavlik said Ge-sicki wouldn’t have had he stuck with volleyball.
“You look at now and you say if he would have come here [to play volleyball],” Pavlik said, “gotten really good and been on
par with [former men’s volleyball players] Matt Anderson, Max Holt or Aaron Rus-sell, he could be making next year hun-dreds of thousands of dollars. Instead he may be making millions of dollars. I think it was a pretty good choice.”
Anderson, Holt and Russell all played on the 2016 U.S. Olympic team.
Pavlik and Gesicki never got the chance to meet, a fact both of them regret. Gesicki never even had the opportunity to attend a men’s volleyball match at Rec Hall.
If the chance ever came up, Pavlik said the invitation is always there for Gesicki to come to their gym and practice with the volleyball team.
“To get in there and go play some volley-ball, I think it would be fun,” Gesicki said.
A mentor and a friendGesicki eventually did learn how to get
into a three-point stance.“[Adam Breneman] ultimately showed
me,” Gesicki said. “I was trying to learn from Jesse [James] right there on the spot.”
Brenneman and James were two of Penn State’s top tight ends at the time. After that 2014 season, James left the Nittany
Lions a year early for the NFL Draft and was taken by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the fifth round.
Breneman was just a year older than Gesicki and just a year removed from go-ing through a similar adjustment. He was an even higher rated recruit than Gesicki, ranked the No. 1 tight end in the Class of 2014 by ESPN.
However, like Gesicki, Breneman also played mostly wide receiver in high school and went through the same growing pains his freshman season.
There was no better player to serve as a mentor to Gesicki. The two ended up shar-ing a lot more than a position change. They ended up becoming close friends and were roommates in 2015.
Their friendship didn’t start with Brene-man bailing Gesicki out from embarrass-ment, though. The previous season, Bren-eman hosted Gesicki for the 2013 Michigan white out game. That game was the one where the Nittany Lions upset the then-No.18 Wolverines in four overtimes.
“That visit was what fortified him, in his mind, that he wanted to go to Penn State,” Breneman said. “He was fun to hang out with and the guys on the team loved him.”
At that point, Breneman said then-head coach Bill O’Brien shared a vision of the pair playing on the field together as he of-ten used two tight end sets.
Aside from O’Brien’s departure for the NFL before Gesicki even arrived, other reasons existed that prevented that vision from ever being realized.
For different reasons, Breneman and Gesicki saw the field in the same game only once in their Penn State careers.
However, the pair’s struggles may have brought them more together than it took them apart. Gesicki had trouble con-sistently reeling in passing; Breneman couldn’t consistently stay on the field due to injuries.
“We have a great relationship,” Gesicki said. “I was with him when he was injured and couldn’t play and he was with me when I was going through some adversity.”
Going through it all together Breneman’s Penn State career will for-
ever be remembered for failing to live up to his potential due to a slew of knee inju-ries that forced him to miss all of the 2014 and most of the 2015 season.
During that same time was the low point of Gesicki’s own career.
He did play his freshman year, although Franklin said that was a forced choice, and that he maybe should have redshirted Ge-sicki.
“With us and where we were as a pro-gram — being only at 65 scholarships and things like that — we played him,” Frank-lin said. “He probably wasn’t ready.”
Those scholarship reductions and bowl ban were the result of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case, but they were lifted two games into Gesicki’s freshman year.
He saw action in all 13 games that sea-son and came down with 11 catches, but never found the end zone.
He was behind James and two others on the depth chart, but he still viewed his first year with the Nittany Lions as a success.
The next season, he earned the starting tight end job coming out of training camp.
He thought he would start to excel in that role, after all, sports came naturally for him. He never dealt with adversity in sports before, he said.
There’s a first for everything.Gesicki made just 13 catches for 125
yards and one touchdown. Add to the un-spectacular numbers, he also had five drops. None bigger than one against Ohio State.
With the Nittany Lions holding a 3-0 advantage over the top-ranked Buckeyes in Columbus, they were driving into Ohio State territory looking to build a lead.
On second-and-1 from the 44, Christian Hackenberg stepped up in the pocket and hit a wide open Gesicki right on the num-bers for what would have been a 19-yard gain. Except the backpedaling tight end couldn’t hang on.
He grabbed his helmet, seemingly beg-ging for a do-over.
The next play was a 44-yard Saquon Barkley touchdown run, but it was called back for holding. The Nittany Lions ended up punting and squandering a good drive. They lost the game 38-10.
That was the low-point in his career, Ge-sicki recalled.
“Things in the past leading up to that point, after that, it just kind of hit me,” he said. “Ultimately, I was able to fight through it.”
Meanwhile, Breneman played against the Buckeyes, but didn’t record a catch. It was the only game the pair saw the field together. Breneman played just one more game with the Nittany Lions
To read full story, visit colleigan.psu.edu.
Page 4 MonDay, Jan. 8, 2018
‘I wouldn’t change anything’Edward Fan/Collegian
Tight end Mike Gesicki (88) celebrates after a touchdown during the game versus Nebraska at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2017.
Mike Gesicki struggled through his first few seasons at Penn State, but he leaves as one of its all-time great players. His journey from high school tri-state star to future NFL tight end.
Collegian File Photo
Mike Gesicki (88) watches a ball bounce
out of his hands during a game against Ohio
State at Ohio Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 17,
2015. Penn State lost, 38-10.
“I would tell my younger self that if
it’s going to be worth it in the end,
it’s not always going to be easy. Just
continue to fight and just trust in the
process...”
Mike Gesicki
Tight end
The Daily Collegian
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Sophomore Amari Carter’s career-best 26 points catapulted the Lady Lions past Indiana in a tight Big Ten battle. The Lady Lions led nearly the entire game until the Hoosiers used a 21-6 run in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 74 with less than a minute remaining. A late basket from Siyeh Frazier and a Teniya Page free throw proved decisive in the 77-74 victory. Carter finished the game with five rebound and six assists to round out her scoring frenzy.
A career-best 30 points from sophomore forward Lamar
Stevens sent Charlie Hall, the the son of Julie Louis-Drey-
fus (Elaine in “Seinfeld”) and the rest of his Northwest-
ern teammates back to Illinois with a 78-63 loss on their
minds. Stevens served up a Bryce Jordan Center record
of 14 made field goals in a single game and helped lead the
Nittany Lions to a 70.8 shooting percentage in the first half,
the highest for Penn State in the last 11 seasons. The Nitta-
ny Lions pulled to .500 through four games in the Big Ten.
No soup for N.U.
AP
We’ve all watched Liam Neeson save hostages in nearly every single movie he stars in, but Saturday night it was forward Liam Folkes saving his Nittany Lions in Pegula Arena with a shootout goal. The lone goal in the shootout pro-vided Penn State the edge over No. 15 Wisconsin as the Nittany Lions took five of six possible points on the weekend. Folkes also had the night’s opening goal as the Nittany Lions have now not lost in their last 10 games.
Liam (Folkes) Neeson
Caitlin Lee/Collegian
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