"The parts of ourselves that make us vulnerable are also the parts that make us beautiful."
I heard these words in a church service I attended a few weeks ago while visiting a friend in Washington, D.C. And, for the last few weeks, while thinking about the end of my time at UNC and at The Daily Tar Heel, they keep coming back to me.
I feel vulnerable all the time. I usually don't like it. I used to be incredibly private about my emotions and didn't want to share what I was feeling. I have gotten better about this, but it is still hard.
But being at The Daily Tar Heel has taught me not only how powerful being vulnerable is, but how necessary it is. If I have learned anything here, it is to do things that make you feel vulnerable. Do things that are hard. Do things that scare you.
Even going to UNC scared me. "It's too big," I thought. I went to a small high school and was nervous how I would fare in a larger college environment. But I came here anyway.
"You can make a big school smaller but you can't make a small school bigger." I don't remember exactly which neighbor told me this when I was deciding where to go to college, but I will never forget these words.
I joined The Daily Tar Heel during my first year of UNC, looking to find my own small part of the University. My first semester as a City & State writer was hard — I had never written a news article, never covered a Chapel Hill Town Council meeting, never gotten criticism on a council member's blog for an article I had written. But the DTH had quickly become one of my favorites part of UNC, so I stayed.
The hard parts never went away, they just changed. I've jumped around to different roles at the paper — from City writer, University senior writer, assistant Audience Engagement editor, Audience Engagement editor and now Community Engagement director and they all had their own unique challenges. And a lot of times, I couldn't avoid being vulnerable. There's no way I could have excelled in all these positions without asking for help.
When former EIC (and my newsroom mom) Praveena Somasundaram asked me how I was doing, I knew she wouldn't take anything other than an honest answer. And I will always be grateful for that. General Manager Courtney Mitchell has been a support system for me, given me advice and rejoiced with me about my successes. My fellow management members — EIC Guillermo Molero, Managing Editor Allie Kelly and Director of Enterprise Preston Fore — have always had my back. Elise Trexler, who was my assistant last spring, has always been there to be my personal assistant as well.
