"That's what I want to do"

O'Connor, a senior news journalism major, chose his career path early on. Like most children, O'Connor read comics such as Garfield. He enjoyed and showed a talent for drawing. But it was not until about sixth grade when O'Connor became aware of Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip by Bill Watterson, that he wanted to become a cartoonist.

"When I read that, I was like, 'That's what I want to do,'" he says.

O'Connor still admires Watterson's work and strives for his style of brushwork in his own pieces.

"It's rich," he says. "The reason I like it is because it's different than what's ever been done in a comic strip."

Patrick O'Connor, winner of the national John Locher Memorial award, lies surrounded by a pile of his cartoons.

At Kent Roosevelt High School, O'Connor honed his skills, drawing mainly one-line gag strips. He showed his work to his art teacher.

"He really didn't like them," O'Connor says. "He just looked at me and said, 'You're not saying anything.'" Then it clicked.

"That's when I really started reading the newspapers," O'Connor says. Reading Mike Royko's syndicated column in the Akron Beacon Journal made O'Connor notice the editorial cartoons.

O'Connor's work then began to progress into editorial cartoons.

During his sophomore year of high school in 1993, he started drawing editorial cartoons for the school newspaper The Colonel. By the summer before his senior year in 1994, O'Connor was submitting his artwork for publication in the Daily Kent Stater.

In 1995, O'Connor began at Kent State, where he continued drawing editorial cartoons. Testing his skills, O'Connor made a foray into comic strips in fall 1998.

"I wanted to see if I could do it," he says.

And he could. He produced a daily panel strip called "Sherman Street" for the Daily Kent Stater, chronicling his own living experience with several roommates in a house on Sherman Street in Kent.