I was dramatically singing along in the car to Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” when I got the call. Alicia Guerrero, the Trinitonian’s adviser at the time, told me that I would be next year’s editor-in-chief, and I went flying by a police car in my excitement.
It was a bit of a miracle that I ended up at the Trinitonian in the first place. Apart from when I was in elementary school and thought “journalist” meant being the actress who reads the news on TV (and therefore had the coolest job in the world), I had never considered going into or even participating in journalism.

It wasn’t until the Trinitonian interviewed me for a story that I began to consider it. The story was part of a series called “Jackpot,” where a Trinitonian reporter selects a random student to interview about their life for a feature all about them. At the end of the interview, having heard about my interests, then pulse reporter and now pulse editor, Lauren Roddis, suggested I apply to the Trinitonian.

A few weeks later and to my complete surprise, I was hired and trained to be the pulse section editor. I don’t know what possessed Logan and Ale, then editor-in-chief and managing editor, to hire a confused first-year with no direct journalism experience who showed up to the interview in a Onceler costume straight from a FYPOT rehearsal, but they decided to take a chance on me, and I was ready to give this job my all.

For the first few months, I did everything that I could to avoid having to write an article — convinced the other editors would see that I was a fraud who should never have been made a section editor without having worked as a reporter first. When I eventually did have to write, however, I knew that I wanted to write Jackpots.

I fell in love with writing these stories. At first, my interviews with the selected students were 20-30 minutes each, just the time needed for me to get to know them enough to crank out an article. By the end of my time as pulse editor, however, I was spending over an hour with each person, at times running late for class because I was so invested in hearing more about that one teacher who believed in them in high school, or how their relationship with their mom changed over time. These conversations were surprisingly and deeply intimate, and I became committed to telling the stories of these students as fully and richly as I could.

I have always enjoyed learning about people, but I never realized until working for the Trinitonian that being a journalist is the perfect excuse for getting to explore this curiosity. I didn’t have to feel awkward about asking people questions; it was my job. Being a journalist allowed me to not only satisfy my own curiosity, but it gave me a platform to tell everyone else about the incredibly cool person I had just met. In time and in conjunction with dozens of other stories, being a journalist allowed me to begin to tell the story of Trinity as a community.

When I became editor-in-chief, I knew I wanted to continue this mission. Journalism is so many things, but at its heart, journalism is storytelling. Storytelling informed by truth, fact-finding and fairness, but still storytelling. It is one person, sitting at a computer, writing “We are here. This person, our neighbor, she is here, and this is her story.”

This paper is your story, and it is my story. It is the story of all of us, here together at this time and in this space, and the lives we’ve created for ourselves. I may have won the Jackpot, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from my time at the Trinitonian, it’s that you don’t need a special pen or years of training to tell these stories.

I could never have imagined when I got that call how much the journalistic landscape would change during my year as editor-in-chief. From international students having their visas revoked over op-eds they wrote in their school papers to even major shows like “60 Minutes” facing extreme political pressure, journalism has come under attack.

In the coming days, months and years, then, it is more important than ever to keep telling stories. I may be leaving the Trinitonian for now, but I urge you to pick up the pen and help keep a record of the people around you. We need to preserve journalism as an outlet where communities can tell their stories and share what is important to them, and that starts with the next generation of journalists.

The stories are out there. All you need to do is tell them.