One year ago, I began my first quarter on staff at The Communicator. I was thrown into an editor position right away. Having a background in photography prepared me for the job; however, I’d come to learn I would face new challenges in the next two years, and love it.
Growing up, I wrote short stories. They were all about fantasy lands, wizards, castles and duels. The stories always ended the same way, happily.
Once I was in high school, I knew that I wanted to write for a living. I took all the advanced writing classes and continued writing for fun. I wrote novels that surpassed 50,000 words but again, the ending was always the same, happy.
Then I was a senior and I was paying more attention to the news. The 2016 presidential election was in full force and I was dead set on making sure I was informed. I never paid much thought to how our news was produced, until mentions of “fake news” were being thrown around.
Eventually, I found myself at SFCC and when I enrolled in a journalism class, I was stumped. For the first time in my life I was struggling to write. I was scared. Maybe writing wasn’t for me.
Soon enough, I started allowing myself to stray from what I already knew about writing. I worked agonizingly hard at writing on deadline, to conform to rules of news-writing, and at making sure I was challenging myself.
I’m so passionate about journalism because of the ever-growing need we have for the truth it seeks. Not all endings have to be happy, and journalism allows history to be documented.
As such, I’m so excited to be the Editor in Chief during The Communicator’s 50th year and over- joyed to be able to share my passion for journalism with my fellow students.