My mother made me a writer at a young age. She isn’t one. She didn’t even have any favorites that she shared with me, either. She just made me read a book and then write about it to make sure I was actually comprehending the hundreds of books my sister and I breezed through as children. Writing book reports was annoying but easy. Writing a good book report, on the other hand, was a fun challenge.
I began to read more perceptively, experiment with different ways of recounting the stories I read, and then read them back to myself, either supremely self-satisfied or sick of my own voice. It didn’t have to be Kierkegaard. I was unraveling Dr. Seuss’ rhyme schemes to no end. I was a goner; visions of a life full of writing filled my head.
Everywhere I went, I demanded to write and to be read. So when I arrived on campus in the late-summer heat of Poughkeepsie, thighs sticking to every piece of furniture during international and first-year student orientation, I didn’t know what the Vassar newspaper was called, but I did know I was going to write for it. Maybe even ascend its ranks, turn the whole thing upside down and introduce a whole new readership. I was a first-year and literally every open opportunity in sight, especially at The Misc, felt like mine for the taking.
I don’t remember the first-year org fair in its entirety, but I remember huddling under a tent with the few friends I had made, pressed against others in my year, trying to find The Miscellany News table. By then, I had learned the name of the paper and that they would be here today to table for writers. Looking back through my emails, it looks like I put my name down for the Features, News and Opinions sections’ email lists. A few days later, I got an email asking for Features articles, and I replied with the first idea that came to mind. I wrote about international student orientation. I could not be stopped.
I became a staff writer that semester as soon as I met the three-article requirement, interviewing in a corner classroom in Rockefeller Hall. It was raining outside, so the walk from Lathrop felt a little longer than usual. Everyone talks about the Miscellany News interviews as daunting, a room full of people staring at you that you’ve never seen before, and have only met over email. But I felt completely at ease. I smiled as hard as I could and tried to remember everyone’s names. It went by so smoothly. When I stood up to leave, everyone clapped and that’s when I was thrown off.
After four years, I know this is a Misc courtesy. We applaud anyone who takes the time to take our high time commitment, low recognition-and-reward deal that is student journalism. But then, I was shocked and did a bad job at hiding it. Stumbling out of the room, I made it all the way downstairs before I realized I forgot my umbrella upstairs. When I came back to collect it, the room broke out into applause again as I left. I laughed the whole way back to my dorm room and got an email the next day that I was in. I called my mom to let her know everything was going well at Vassar.
I always set out to write Features, and I set a reminder to do so every other week. I was in awe of the section and wanted to be worthy of it. I submitted the best pieces I could, but I would only start them on Sunday, the day they were due. Even now, I am typing away on a Sunday, hours before I promised our Ed and Exec Board that I’d turn in my retrospective. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The section’s freedom and creativity fit perfectly with everything I wanted to write about, which was pretty much impossible to pin down. After my piece on international student orientation, I interviewed first-year athletes in my dorm room, with a plate of thank-you cookies baked by my dear friend Octavia Cordes, and asked them what they thought their future at Vassar would look like. Since then, I’ve written about snow, the Indian Premier League, keepsakes, horoscopes, apple picking, Reverend Sam Speers and on and on and on.
I wrote as a staff writer until I joined the Features team as an Assistant Editor in my sophomore year. You could say that the team and everyone else on The Misc during my time here were my colleagues. What a strange word for people you love and admire immensely. HR would not approve of how deeply I became tied to the people I began working with from that point on. I am strongly convinced that my fellow Brewers on The Misc have played a major role in the writer, editor and person I am. I learn more through them, I’ve grown to match their grace when we’ve been tested, and I doubt the Oxford comma because of them. Without my time at The Miscellany News, I would never have stopped being solely an ambitious writer and become what I am today: The Features Editor. Nothing more, nothing less. What an honor.
I quickly realized that I didn’t want to “ascend the ranks” in The Misc; I just wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to contribute where I was the most effective and have an outlet for my writing. The Miscellany News alone has kept me a consistent writer for the last four years, and that is coming from someone who has routinely taken writing-required classes. As an editor for The Misc, I could read deeply and critically, and as a writer, I could express myself and record Vassar as it is now, for me and those around me. That was what I was looking for, and I stopped hungering for more.
It is a rare thing to feel content, and I’m glad I was immediately given that feeling when I became the section editor in the spring of my sophomore year. I have since shared the title with people like Luke Jenkins, Sydney Jones and Carina Cole, who have broadened my understanding and gratitude for the section. You must know when you’ve struck gold. Not only was I content, but constantly surrounded by people who reminded me every day why that was. So I stayed put. I stayed a Features Editor, and now I will graduate as having been just that. As I’ve said to anyone who even tangentially mentions The Miscellany News to me, “Bury me in the Features section of the Masthead.”
As I’m writing this retrospective, one week, seven days away from commencement, I am wondering how to explain what this moment in time feels like for me. As I said at the start of this piece, I think this falls outside my capabilities. I have undoubtedly become a better writer here, but clearly there is still more work to do. I’ll leave the perfection up to the other incredible retrospectives in this issue. I’m sure they will aptly convey how it feels to stand here, on the precipice of the real world, with hindsight that simply does not translate into foresight, better than I can. And that’s okay. I wouldn’t be the writer I am without them, and this paper is what it is because we make each other better. I am content.