I was inspired to join newspaper in my attempt to become Rory Gilmore. In case you are a fellow Gilmore Girls fan, my inspiration was pre-season 5 Rory. For all you non Gilmore Girls watchers, season 5 is when Rory decides to make some questionable decisions which do not align with high-school-Rory’s core values, which I was drawn to as a freshman.
My freshman year, along with my fellow seniors’, was marked by black boxes in zoom meetings, dalagona coffee, and extreme loneliness. In my “me-time”, I read entire book series in three days, I binge watched television, and I learned how to knit. I bought roller skates and practiced in my driveway, I went on neighborhood bike rides, and I slowly developed a half-decent music taste. I also wrote. A lot.
I suffered from middle-schooler-writing-superhero-stories syndrome, where my main characters had colorful hair and magic powers. Without anyone in high school to tell me to “get a life” or “this is so cringey”, freshman/pandemic Sarah continued her quest to be a renowned fantasy author. To make this dream a reality, I planned on joining creative writing my sophomore year.
But as I binge-watched Gilmore Girls, a part of me was drawn to the newspaper life. In order to live out one’s Rory Gilmore dreams, one must not take creative writing, one must write for a newspaper. To reconcile with the fact that I couldn’t be the fantasy author I had originally planned on, I decided that in the newspaper, I would have plenty of time to write creatively, on top of taking photography and practicing graphic design. Therefore, the newspaper must be the place for me.
Regardless of the fact that after I joined and learned that I could not, in fact, write whatever I wanted, I stayed. Partly because I had made amazing friends, and partly because once you join you can’t really leave.
Realistically, the likelihood of anyone outside the paper reading this is slim, so to my friends: thank you for the inside jokes, thank you for the joy of creating something meaningful, and thank you for making newspaper less stressful than Chilton’s. To Mr. Garcia, please open the blinds more — natural light is nice. To everyone else, thank you for actually reading the newspaper. This assignment was quite stressful, and it’s nice to be appreciated.
