During my high school years, I’ve developed an intense appreciation for a couch that should’ve been thrown in a dumpster years ago.
The espresso-shot-stained sofa in the back of the Journalism room was my spot during every marathon-long deadline night — it was a constant. Its saggy cushions watched me grow more than I ever had.
I spent my first day as a staffer sitting on my trembling hands for so long they started to tingle.
I gazed at the walls covered in national awards — the same walls that would eventually feature some of my own. I listened to the terrifying array of senior editors give first-day announcements and hoped none of them noticed my eyes widening with terror. Little did I know I would become one of them three years later.
But I also noticed the couch in the corner of the backroom. The beaten up, incredibly well-loved, disgustingly-brownish blue couch.
The overly plush pillows swallowed me up everytime I sat on them — and that was for an absurd amount of time every week. I sat there when I first learned how to export an InDesign document, tighten a three-hour board meeting into 500 words and bounce back after tough writing critiques. That couch was there when my voice shook and my notepad filled with scribbled down quotes during my first interview.
The version of me that couch saw was nowhere near a leader.
But as the interviews progressed, the stories got tougher and I built my way up the editorial ladder, I started to become the opposite. The year I began to speak up in brainstorms and fearlessly blast my playlist in the backroom was the year the janitors finally moved that couch into the dumpster and traded it out for a leather one. The J-room upgraded at the same time I did.
My non-journalism friends would always nag me with the question “Why do you keep torturing yourself with this?” as my to-do list overflowed with newspaper-related tasks, and I’d always respond, “You don’t get it, it’s addicting.”
Yes, I know how to solve a quadratic equation and I know the formula for cellular respiration, but in 20 years — or a couple months — that knowledge will slip.
The countless nights I spent hunched over my laptop until 2 a.m. taught me time management lessons far tougher than anything I’d known before. Tate preached the importance of professionalism, and after interviewing Peace Corps ambassadors and politicians and police officers, I feel ready to present myself to the real world.
But the countless stories and lessons came together as I got the call from Tate that I’d won National Journalist of the Year. My eyes were blurry as the tears of pride welled up.
Freshman-me sitting on that run-down couch would’ve awkwardly laughed if you told her that she’d be leading a national-award-winning staff of 70 as an Editor-in-Chief. Now I sit on the shiny, new couch with shiny, new confidence — I no longer come into the J-room, or any room, with shaking hands and a trembling voice.
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