It is with a sad yet grateful heart that I write this last article for The Crimson. My fingers are nostalgic as they type this, and I feel sentimental as I attempt to reconstruct all my memories from the past four years on this staff. Of all the things with which I have been involved at Samford, being a part of The Crimson staff has been the most rewarding, the most challenging, and easily the most fun.
Freshman Rebekah had no idea what she was getting herself into when she sent that first email to The Crimson during her first month on campus. I had never written a story for a newspaper in my life, and I had to learn quickly. As an English major, I wrote articles that were twice as long as they needed to be, and the terms “lead” and “inverted pyramid” and even “AP Style” were brand new to me. Don’t even get me started on my Oxford Comma crisis.
I always knew I wanted to major in English when I went to college. But The Crimson made me, for the first time in my life, wonder if my life might take a different direction than I had always planned. I discovered I loved writing journalistically; I loved interviewing people; I loved investigating news on campus; I loved learning about the art of journalism. Most of all, I loved telling people’s stories.
So, I added a second major, and I officially became a JMC student.
I started working as the News Editor at the start of my sophomore year. Thankfully, we were finally able to meet as a staff in the newsroom (shoutout to the tiny old newsroom in Divinity North!) and publish a real, physical newspaper again, so I had people to help me in person as I learned how to design and edit a newspaper spread.
Sophomore year was the first time I felt like I was really a part of a newspaper staff. As we spent more time in the office together, crowding around each other’s computers, reading each other’s emails and editing each other’s stories (shout out to my Jon Meacham story), we grew close in a way that only a newspaper staff can grow close. Mackenzee Simms, Kate Young, Katy-Beth Boyers and Moriah Mason were women whom I looked up to and who showed me how to handle newspaper reporting with grace and dignity. I am a better person because I got to work with them.
Unfortunate circumstances led to me unexpectedly becoming interim Editor-in-Chief of The Crimson during the first semester of my junior year. That semester was the most challenging, yet most rewarding, of all. It was a semester of rebuilding for The Crimson, as an almost entirely new staff had to be hired. Only three of us had ever worked on the paper before, and only one of us (me LOL) had ever done page layout.
And so, we had more long, sleepless nights of writing, editing and InDesign. I remember that first issue of the new school year, we were covering the protest on the steps of the Wright Center, where students protested the Office of Spiritual Life uninviting a Presbyterian Church from campus because of their support of the LGBTQ+ community. What a way to start off the new school year: A new staff, a new media advisor and fresh suspicion from the university! We spent hours doing page design in the office that first night of publication. I don’t think I left until 4 a.m.
But it was all worth it. Every long night, every tear shed in the office, every hard phone call, every time I had to drive to campus on a Friday night to pick up the papers. As editor, I got to watch people grow; I watched their writing improve; I watched them grow passionate about the paper, just as I had.
And I saw myself grow. I grew as a writer, an editor, a leader. I saw my perspectives change and my passions shift with each new layer of journalism I uncovered, with each new person I interviewed or staff member I connected with.
Perhaps most importantly of all, The Crimson gave me my people. Harper, Davis and Connor, thank you for being my saving grace during that crazy semester I was editor. I could not have chosen three better section editors. Mackenzee, thank you for being my mentor and cheerleader since I started as a freshman. Olivia, thank you for your creative eye that has elevated The Crimson to a whole new level. To my Crimson Cuties, thank you for being my best friends and walking with me through the rollercoaster that is life. Dr. Heath, thank you for your eagerness to help, your mentorship and your flexibility. Thanks to all of you on staff for your friendship and the ways in which each of you have shown me Christ through your excellence, integrity and selflessness.
And to The Crimson: Thank you for being my favorite part of Samford University for four years.
Staff Writer
