Education Quote by Irv Kupcinet

The origin story here isn’t a thunderclap of destiny; it’s a kid spotting a small machine in motion and feeling the gears click inside himself. “Freshman year” does quiet work: it places the moment before credentials, before ego, before the mythology that professionals often paste over their beginnings. Kupcinet frames journalism not as an abstract calling but as something seen in the wild - students “putting out” a paper, doing the unglamorous logistics of reporting, editing, and meeting a deadline. The verb choice is telling. They aren’t dreaming about journalism; they’re producing it.

“It touched a responsive chord in me” borrows the language of music, and that metaphor is the subtext. Kupcinet isn’t claiming genius; he’s describing attunement. The chord was already there, waiting for vibration. That modesty reads as both sincere and strategic: it suggests a temperament suited to his era of columnists and city rooms, where being observant, quick, and socially porous mattered as much as formal training.

Context matters, too. For a Chicago journalist who became a fixture of mid-century media, the high school newsroom is a democratic portal: a place where civic life becomes legible through copy desks and ink-stained hands. The line also smuggles in a belief about craft. Journalism, at its best, isn’t born from grand proclamations; it starts when someone sees a community telling itself stories on schedule and thinks, I want in on that.