For my first copy shift freshman year, I could not find The Misc Office in CC303. I reread the email the Copy Editor at the time sent several times over, and being directionally challenged (and a bit nervous for my first shift), I ended up knocking on the Main dorm 303 instead. Thankfully, no one answered, and the Copy Editor guided me to CC303 via too many emails to count. I remember in my cloud of confusion, however, considering using this inability to find the office as an excuse to not go. I have never been one to be particularly active in the community—I tended to stay content in my academic realm and self-motivated by my own goals. In college, however, I wanted to branch out more. With my passion for reading and writing, I chose The
Misc—rather trivially at first—as a route to be more engaged with and interested in the students around me after reading a random issue lying on a table. I did not realize how much I cared about The Misc—how much I associated it with my college life and how I liked it when others associated it with me—until I gained the distance to look back on my commitment to the paper. As I graduate, I realize that The Misc has been a bigger part of my time than I expected because I truly enjoyed being a part of this paper. I like contributing to something for the community with the opportunity to collaborate with people I would not have met in my own academic circle. I like reading what my peers are pondering and seeing what the campus has done and will be doing.
I began on The Misc by copy editing my first semester of freshman year, where I found a foundation in Copy and learned the writing style. Simply, I liked reading the paper. When an opportunity for Assistant Copy Editor opened, and then for Copy Editor, I did not hesitate to accept the positions. I had written nonchalantly as well; gradually The Misc’s operations unfurled and I liked being more involved, meeting other editorial board members and seeing more behind the scenes into the belly of the paper. I eventually joined as an Assistant Sports Editor because I saw an opening for a section that seemed like it needed support. Though I admit I am not the most involved in athletics at Vassar, my incentive was that I wanted to be more involved in The Misc, more contributing and active than my Copy Editor position. I have greatly enjoyed my
experience in Sports, writing articles and learning about sports at Vassar I would not have
thought twice about. I became Features Editor as my final position on the paper and finally felt I had found a corner of the paper that felt right.
The Misc has been one of the few constants in my Vassar life. I’ve juggled with majors,
flip-flopped with career tracks, fluctuated with study abroad plans and rearranged my academics
as a result of all of this, but I have always wished to keep The Misc throughout it all. Even during moments when The Misc seemed irrelevant or redundant to whatever life I had planned at the
time, it did not matter because that is not what the newspaper was about for me. The Misc is where students can be creative and observant and opinionated and share all of that information with those who may appreciate their insights, or who may not—or for those who trivially picked up the paper one day and decided they wanted to join in too.