Patrick Manonne

“What has been the the biggest thing that you learned up to this point in your life?”

“My first couple years in University I started playing on the varsity baseball team. Those two

years I spent were good but also bad because I was in a bad spot mentally. I was on the team but I wasn’t really enjoying it. So after those two years were up, I started to look for other things outside of sports that I was interested in, like improv. Throughout those years, I learned about myself and what I was passionate about.”

“What was the most significant thing that you encountered on your transition from your sports background to more artistic hobbies?”

“When I was playing sports, my lack of self-confidence as an athlete had translated into a lack of self confidence in other areas of my life. The biggest thing for me was letting go of what other people thought of me. I still do to this day to an extent, but I’ve gotten over it quite a bit. It took until later on in University to find my place and be comfortable with who I was which led me to be a lot happier.”

“What are some things about society that you dislike?”

“My complaints are almost always just trivial things. One of them relates back to sports. I hate when people are overly competitive, especially at amateur levels of sport. We’re all competitive to a certain extent, but at the heart of it’s just a game. Sports are supposed to be fun. Second, is when people take things too seriously. I understand there are a lot of problems in the world, but if we can’t laugh at ourselves we have kind of lost our way.”

“Have you ever experienced any of this directly?”

“I had a youth hockey coach who was a relatively nice man. This was probably when I was about eight. We were a good amateur level team, but none of us were going to make it professionally. We ended up winning a minor league championship. The next year, he invited everyone back to play for the team but there were still formal tryouts. After the tryouts, he pulled me aside and said we’ve decided to take somebody else instead of you. I was just a kid, so I was pretty distraught. The coach got so obsessed with winning that he didn’t just do it to me, he got rid of other players too. In addition to youth sports, I find people are overly competitive in education, you know wanting to get the best grade. It’s not about getting the best grades, at the end of the day it is about learning. I find people lose sight of that sometimes.”

“Do you think youth are looked down in our current society?”

“Yeah, I think they are, but to differing degrees. I’m in my early to mid twenties. I feel like people around my age have largely escaped that kind of negative perception. But I’d say anybody under currently under twenty does get harshly judged. To question the younger generations motivation and work ethic is pretty harsh, and I think that’s really unfair.

The one thing I would be concerned for the younger generation and even around my age is reliance on technology. I know it’s a large part of life now, but you have to know how to exist without it just for the purpose of being creative and imaginative. Additionally, I think technology has affected the younger generation’s ability to communicate with each other. I’ll be at I’ll get work or school, really anywhere, and I’ll notice that people are all just on their phones. I remember going to a party recently and some guy was so insistent on getting the Wi-Fi password from the party’s hosts and that annoyed me to no end because there are people here to interact with.”

“If you could say a word of tradition to your audience what would it be?”

“The most important thing, first and foremost, is to maintain a positive outlook on life. If you can find a group of people around you that make you happy and value you for you, then you’re doing something right.”