Column: Taking a break from the news

Column%3A+Taking+a+break+from+the+news

Luke Taylor, Editor-in-Chief

My summer break is finally beginning! I can’t wait to enjoy my few weeks before school starts up again.

I applied to be the summer editor-in-chief for the News this year because I wanted to use my break to improve my writing and editing skills, and I was honored to be offered the position.

This, of course, snowballed into more things to do. I needed to live on campus, and to live on campus over the summer, you need to take at least one class.

I picked out a math class and settled in, thinking a single class and an article or so each day wouldn’t be that bad. In the summer, we only publish two things per day.

Since then, I have gained a lot of respect for every editor-in-chief to precede me. This job is deceptively hard; I spent so many hours just trying to figure out what to cover, calling and emailing people in hopes of scheduling interviews, and actually doing the main job of writing and editing.

Since I was the only employee of the News who was on campus most of the summer, I couldn’t just delegate newswriting to anyone else.

However, I was incredibly lucky and am incredibly grateful to have several people who worked as opinions writers all summer. Every single day, I had at least one column I could edit and publish, cutting my responsibilities down by half.

I don’t think any of the people who fulfilled that role this summer have any idea how helpful they were to me, but their skillful writing over a variety of topics provided a catalogue of content in which anyone could find something they’re interested in.

I also got help from many of the students who will have editing positions this fall; whether they gave me advice on editing or covered topics I didn’t feel confident writing about by myself, they were always available to help me out.

Of course, my advisor was always here to give me article ideas, tell me who to contact for stories, and help improve my writing by critiquing each article.

Even with all these awesome people backing me up, I still managed to worry about everything all summer.

I’ve learned so much and I’m much more confident in my skills as a journalist, but after a stressful school year during a pandemic and a long summer being the only person in the newsroom, I’m super excited for a month away from writing or homework.

This is our last day of publishing for the summer semester, so I’m going to go home and take a long nap.

The News will return with our normal coverage on August 23, the first day of classes in the fall 2021 semester.

Luke Taylor can be reached at [email protected].