Out of everything I thought I’d get involved with during college, becoming a writer strayed far from the potential possibilities in my mind. In my first semester, I only wanted to do my best academically and make it through college. Nowadays, I’m juggling multiple extracurriculars and writing several sports stories every few weeks. While the story behind my current position is simple, I feel it holds an important message at its core that I’d like to share.
My “Etownian” experiences started accidentally during my first semester. My friends went to a restaurant while I stayed in the Schlosser lounge and studied calculus. One former “Etownian” writes suddenly appeared around the TV’s corner and asked to interview me. Around the same time, I wrote video game reviews as a hobby. When I casually mentioned my writing, we discussed whether I’d like to write for “The Etownian.”
Sometime after the interview, I emailed someone at “The Etownian” about publishing my reviews. I ended up contacting Thomas Rebar, former sports editor. We chatted briefly before I sent him one of my reviews, which got published in the next issue. As the semester rolled on, I would write a review roughly once a month and send it to Rebar, who integrated it into upcoming issues. This continued for about a year and a half.
Towards the end of my sophomore year, “The Etownian” was looking for new editors. Rebar prepared to graduate, and Connor Burke took over the sports editor position. This left the assistant sports editor position open for anyone interested. My hesitation almost pushed me away from taking the job, but my friends encouraged me to say screw it and take the position. Even if I didn’t do that well, it was still worth trying!
In the first semester of my junior year, I officially became the assistant sports editor of “The Etownian.” The main additions to my responsibilities involved writing about sporting events and making layouts for the sports section. My writing style didn’t immediately mesh with sports-related stories, and layout creation felt daunting. The program we use to create them, InDesign, sometimes feels more complicated than rocket science. However, I appreciated the challenges these new tasks posed and eventually grew accustomed to them.
I still wrote game reviews around this time, but I also started writing health and fitness-related articles. I wanted to use my position as the assistant sports editor to advocate for important messages by presenting them alongside factual evidence. Sometimes I also wrote health articles because I wanted to share interesting knowledge.
After another year and a half of working at “The Etownian,” I got promoted to the sports editor position, after Burke took over a larger role in the newspaper. That brings us to this semester, where I’ve been maddeningly busy with numerous extracurricular and academic activities. I’ve been running club events, writing stories and interviews, and practicing for an Honors in the Discipline presentation. Thankfully, our current assistant sports editor David Bray has helped me out immensely by getting more and more on top of things as the semester progresses. The main thing to take away from my above ramblings is to be open to new ideas. I only got involved with “The Etownian” because I happened to get interviewed by one of their former writers. I could’ve not contacted Rebar or taken the assistant sports editor position due to hesitation or fear or any other negative trait, and I didn’t know if I would even be good at it. But I still decided to try, and here we are now. So the next time an opportunity comes knocking at your door, open it up!
