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The same went for high school. I enrolled in the class because my older brother told me it was an “easy A.” And it was. But I soon learned that my interest went beyond the easy A. Though I tried to stay away from writing, I became interested in editing. In my mind, it was more technical, and that’s what I liked. After a year and a half of being the closest thing to a reporter that class had, I moved up to editing news page two. The 10-page monthly newspaper covered the same things all the time. If we didn’t have an article about crowded hallways, we were short that issue. This didn’t bother me — I knew I didn’t have the time or the knowledge yet to revolutionize that newspaper. After a year and a half of editing, I spent my senior year as editor in chief with a friend. Our printing company moved out of the state, and we were left with a business card of a company in the area. Prior to this, all pages were printed out, waxed onto flats and sent to the printer through the mail. I had to talk with the new company to set up an FTP account to digitally send the PageMaker files; in addition to being editor in chief, I became the tech go-to person for pretty much every teacher in the school. I loved it. I spent four years in a class that I ended up running. But working on it wasn’t always easy. Often times, when we neared press time, I would stay after school up to seven hours, proofing pages and reorganizing stories. When this got to be too much, I would lie down below the chalkboard on which we organized each issue and just shut down for a while. I miss The Bear Press. It was my first real venture into the career I wish to pursue. But graduating from high school led me to better opportunities — namely, The Diamondback. Working on the independent student daily, I’ve learned so much more than I have in any journalism class. I started as a copy editor and have worked my way up to being a deputy managing editor, also partly in charge of the copy desk. I’ve reinforced style rules, stemming from my love of editing, and transferred the publication-specific stylebook to be available online. I’m only a junior. I’m only in college. The future holds so much more room for improvement. Maybe I’ll be the editor in chief of The Diamondback. Maybe I’ll go on to work for The Washington Post. Wherever I end up, I’ll always remember the makeshift teleprompter in the converted storage room in seventh grade — the beginning of my rise to the top. |
