I’m not quite sure how I ended up here.
I’m an economics major. My extracurriculars usually consist of studying, anticipating my break when studying and telling everyone that I hated my major. If it wasn’t for Rory Gilmore, I would have never even thought you could work at your school’s newspaper.
But there I was: a junior in college with no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no place in Chapel Hill I could truly call “home.” In came The Daily Tar Heel and my third-choice desk: Audience Engagement.
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but I knew that I had nothing to lose. Maybe writing would give me an escape from my life and, surprise surprise, it did. Not in terms of articles, but in terms of captions and newsletters. My weekly AE shifts gave me a breath of fresh air, and I wanted more of it.
My on-the-whim staffer application turned into an on-the-whim assistant editor application. And then all of sudden I was the AE editor. My spontaneous decision to join the newsroom became my life. And at first, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
My weekly hours in the office quadrupled. I was socialing every published story and attempting to make AE Desk everything I knew it could be. But, there was always a feeling of not deserving it. Was I doing any of this right? I mean, I doubt Media and Journalism 101: The Media Revolution is qualification enough. Knowing how to calculate inflation wasn’t much help. But there I was, forcing myself into the office week after week, constantly trying to prove to myself that I — and AE — belonged.
I’m not quite sure when I started feeling that The DTH was home. It could have been when the 2024 summer staff went to the Durham Bulls game, when Abby Miss asked me to go to the Yogurt Pump with her during a lull in shift, when Maggie Buck asked me to run the Tar Heel 10 Miler with her or when Will Lingo restocked our snacks and I jumped in joy — shamelessly.
At some point this past year, I entered the door code, walked up the loud metal stairs and opened the door and walked into the brick office. I said my fair share of hellos and strolled to the back table. I took my seat, I opened my laptop and I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. I stopped questioning myself and the back table became the home I was looking for.
I think it’s my distance from the newsroom outside of work that makes me love it so much. It’s my time to slip away from reality, and as stressful as it could be at times, I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything else.
