Preston Hooker: Harbinger gave me the ability to work harder than I ever thought possible

If I were going to be Head Video Editor as a senior, I wouldn’t have any other official positions on staff. 

At least, that’s what I was told by my Head Video Editors last year. At the time, I was an Assistant Video Editor, Copy Editor and Staff Artist. My other positions had already taken my focus away from my favorite medium of journalism: videography. That was supposed to change with seniority.

I still planned to keep writing, copyediting and drawing for Harbinger. My focus would just be concentrated on video: maximizing the number and quality of videos we make.

Yet, when senior-year staff positions were announced at last year’s banquet, my positions were called out as...

“Video Editor, Copy Editor, Staff Artist...”

“and Ads Manager.”

Awesome. 

Not only did I keep the other positions I was supposed to officially drop, but I had a new position that I didn’t even apply for, with new obligations of managing the funding for the paper, which would overshadow my work with video.

Additionally, the position of ads manager is notoriously dreaded among harbinger staffers for its long list of responsibilities and never-ending spreadsheets. A few people even told me to drop it before the next school year started.

Except I hated the idea of dropping positions. I'd already quit plenty of extracurriculars in high school: football for a summer job, track for nannying and policy debate for Harbinger.

I couldn’t back down on the one thing I’d stuck with throughout high school — the most fulfilling thing I’d done at SM East. 

In the fall, I was still lifeguarding until Labor Day, so my schedule consisted of Harbinger for the majority of the school day, picking up and dropping off my nannying kids, then booking it back to the pool to lifeguard. There, I would work on Harbinger, SAT prep, college applications and AP or IB homework between shifts on the stand. And if it was a Friday, I’d host at a restaurant right after lifeguarding — and then over the weekend as well. 

This kind of around-the-clock work was daunting. But after two years on Harbinger, nothing in my schedule could intimidate me more than the rapid-fire two-week deadlines which had become very manageable over time.

When I started as a sophomore, I was still participating in football and debate. It was hard, and I wasn’t there for every game or tournament, but my Harbinger editors helped me grow into my responsibilities, making them manageable with other extracurriculars.

Without the early support from Harbinger leadership and my exposure to harsh deadlines and increased accountability, I wouldn’t have been able to take on much more as an upperclassman. 

Did I really want to be emailing businesses and cashing checks instead of always filming and editing? No. But the exposure and fulfillment I got from persevering through new responsibilities was invaluable for a soon-to-be college student.  

I can’t say I did all the work on video I wanted to, but I'm incredibly confident in the staffers rising into leadership: they’ll do much greater things than I did for our video program.

And, honestly? That’s growth.