I was never supposed to be writing this column. I was never supposed to become an editor at The Daily Tar Heel. In fact, I was never supposed to work here at all. But through a sequence of very fortunate events, here I am, bidding farewell to the greatest experience I could have never asked for.
It all started during the first few weeks of my first year of college when I applied to The DTH on a whim. I didn’t expect to be hired, so you can imagine my surprise and excitement when I received an email welcoming me to the Opinion Desk.
55 minutes later, I received a separate email informing me that I had not been offered a spot on the Opinion Desk.
I showed up to orientation anyway, choosing to accept my acceptance rather than my rejection. Here’s the thing, though — my name was not on any of the contact lists for new hires. Through a small mistake on the recipient list of one email, I had joined The DTH.
After a year on the Editorial Board, I wanted to get more involved with the goal of becoming an editor someday. Since I was a first-year on the Opinion Desk, I thought I might, maybe, perhaps have a shot at becoming assistant Opinion editor, if I was lucky.
A few weeks later, I was instead hired as the Lifestyle editor. I was thrust headfirst into the raging river that is The DTH's newsroom without any experience on the Lifestyle Desk.
To say that I was overwhelmed would be an understatement; I spent many an afternoon openly crying in Coker Arboretum while children, couples and gardeners side-eyed me. I feared that my underhanded way of joining the newspaper had finally caught up to me, and that I was going to let the entire newspaper down.
Spoiler alert: That did not happen.
