‘Post’ editor, a junior, says goodbye to the senior class.
The final few weeks of Spring Semester are marked with insanity, weighted anticipation, anxiety and hope. It’s a time for sleepless nights — reserved for studying or otherwise — and catching up with friends before you all head back home, potentially crossing state or international lines to sleep in your intended bed.
Students are forced to reflect on their prior mistakes and successes (should have gone to class more, but remember how great it felt to finish that final paper?), all while looking to the year ahead (I’m going to hit the gym more, study at 3 a.m. less). That has been interesting for me.
Next week, the Friday issue of The Post will go to the seniors. It will feature our favorite photos from the past four years, and a column boasting their thoughts instead of mine. It will be one of the few times in the past few decades that The Post’s managing editor and editor-in-chief say goodbye to a graduating class they’re not a part of (Rebekah Barnes and I are both juniors).
Our reflections of The Post are a bit different, and we’re only forced to think about the next academic year — for now. I’m choosing to willfully neglect planning past that, while I understand that many in our newsroom are now planning for more than the next day’s issue and their upcoming staff meetings.
When trying to put myself in their shoes, I think of what it means to be a Postie for four academic years.
In the past four years at The Post, more than 500 newspapers, and hundreds of stories and photographs have been produced. Staff members who spent an average of seven hours in the newsroom per day for the past four years logged 4,200 hours in Baker 325, or 175 full days. Many of our staffers, especially our editors, may say that my rough estimates are far too low; someone who stayed in our newsroom from noon to 10 p.m. on a daily basis this past year gave us an average of 1,500 hours alone.
Looking at those preposterous hours and six-page newspapers can make anyone’s head swirl. But the next day, for whatever reason, Posties head back to the newsroom to do it all over again. After they graduate, they visit Baker 325 and tell us how much they miss the crazy production cycle and the even crazier people they worked with.
As much as I miss sleep and eating food that doesn’t come out of a greasy paper bag sometimes, I wouldn’t trade these experiences for the world. Through the days when you’re confident nobody has read your work, sources neglect to call you back for a story your editor has been hounding you for and you’re looking at cramming for a final the next day, you wind up loving the people that catch you when you were hurting, and thanking god that you pulled it all off.
So to our seniors — and any graduating class that has ever spent time in a student newsroom — thank you. Don’t forget to come back and remind us why we love it every once in a while.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="8d7ac32e-fb46-11e5-8a1f-d340048f0145"}}
Emma Ockerman is a junior studying journalism and editor-in-chief of The Post. Want to talk to her? Send her an email at eo300813@ohio.edu or tweet her @eockerman.
