Katie Murphy: I can’t concisely define Harbinger, but I’m grateful for whatever it is

The world doesn’t know what the word “harbinger” really means.

“What’s a harbinger? A messenger of doom?” my lawyer father joked, in his typical English-major fashion, last year when I became an assistant editor of The Harbinger. Sure, that may be what the dictionary says — but Merriam-Webster is wrong:

Harbinger is stomping through a Journalism 1 class on Halloween deadline day with my arms crossed, rocking a scrawling Crayola marker mustache, plaid button-down and Tate-style slip-on shoes to spook the freshmen. 

Harbinger is running through the library to get outside just in time for a staff sunset picture. Then doing cartwheels in the parking lot before getting back to PDFing.

Harbinger is sharing Cheetos, sharing MacBooks, sharing headline ideas — even when mine are so horrible that even Greyson, my kind and gentle newspaper partner in crime, makes fun of them.

Harbinger is spending hours interviewing, writing, editing and wondering, do I really know what I’m doing? It’s realizing that you’re only 18 but there’s so many people’s stories to listen to and learn from if you’re curious enough to ask.

Harbinger is a stomachache from laughter with designers when your Journalism Fairy Godfather Tate calls the font we picked after weeks of searching: “distractingly fat.” Then blasting Disney Channel music in the back room to cope while finding another one. 

It’s beaming when our staff wins Best of Show at a nerdy journalism award ceremony and jumping to our feet like it’s the Super Bowl.  

Harbinger is FaceTiming former editors living in cities hours away to reminisce about my most epic design fails and starting new deadline night traditions like mandatory frozen yogurt and thinking, how can high school get any better than this?

Harbinger is adopting niche journalism room habits passed down by legends: checking kerning (thanks Frannie), naming group chats with CMYK puns (missing Peyton), varying feature highlights (for you Sydney), listening to Hozier (hi miss Celia).

Harbinger is pride while watching Addie and Avery run design brainstorm, all grown up, and lean into the program that’s given me so much — 60 adopted kids and siblings, confidence in myself, a crippling addiction to gradients, em dashes and alternating typeface weight.

Maybe my dad is right and “harbinger” is a messenger of doom, because I sure know it’ll break my heart to leave. But how lucky I am to be part of something that makes saying goodbye hard.

And who cares what harbinger “means” because I’ll always remember what it is to me.