Senior Column: Sarah Berger

I hate people.

Hey, at least I’m honest about it. If you spend enough time around me, you’ll hear me say that phrase at least four times a day, more like 12 if I’m at school.

My high school experience was not what countless Disney Channel movies had promised me. I would consider it monotonous, filled with too many worksheets and too many teenagers complaining about their shattered iPhone screens. Being herded from class to class like cattle for four years gets old. Being able to count the same monogrammed headband on 20 different girls in the cafeteria gets older. I hate routines, and that was what high school became for me.

It’s easy for me to complain about how I hate everything. But as much as I hate everyone and everything there’s something at East that I could never ever possibly hate: the journalism program.

Journalism never ceases to change my perspective of the world. Being on The Harbinger staff has allowed me to meet the most caring and passionate people throughout the school. It showed me that in the sea of zombies that occupy these halls there are golden individuals with golden stories that deserve to be told. It has enabled me to be blessed enough to have to power to do so.

Through three years of late night deadlines and awkwardly stumbling through interviews with complete strangers, I grew and broke out of my shell. I started out in J1 as a little, idealistic freshman who actually had school spirit, carried a pink Vera Bradley bag and sat in the back row every day quietly answering questions to myself because I was too shy to say them out loud. Now, I’m the overly opinionated girl that doesn’t like to wear shoes and threatens to cut off the fingers of staff writers who use an Oxford comma.

As I finally get to leave this place, I know journalism and all the lessons it taught me at East will be there to follow. I know journalism will be there as I write as many of the world’s stories as I possibly can. And I know journalism will be there to show me I might actually like people.

In the jroom, I have grown. I have laughed at the out-of-context quotes scribbled on the quote board. I have cried out in the side stairwell from stress piled onto me during deadline and I have slept on those blue couches that smell like feet. I have experienced too many stress headaches to count and I have earned national awards with my name carefully printed on the certificates. But most importantly, in room 521, I learned the world sucks a lot less than I thought it does.