In true Mata fashion, this farewell is being written on production day, only hours before it is supposed to be published. I have already cried twice today. I had to redo my makeup once. At one point I considered even reliving the glory days by sleeping overnight in the News Office one last time.
Because whether I like it or not, my time at college is ending …
I came into the Highlander as a freshman with the intent of doing page layout. Woe for me, though, the position had already been filled by my arrival. So, like any other newspaper-obsessed teenager who didn’t actually know how to write, I threw myself into photography.
Sometime during that journey I got roped into writing for the news section by my high school friend. And just like that, my entire life became the newspaper.
I never expected to become News Editor. Then Managing Editor. Then Editor-in-Chief. Yet now, looking back, I can’t imagine my college experience unfolding any other way.
Because how many people get to say they spent a week sleeping in a newsroom during campus encampments? Or skipped classes to cover protests because the story felt bigger than attendance? Or argued with fellow editors until 2 a.m. over a single word because accuracy mattered that much? How many people drive to Adelanto at four in the morning for the chance to speak with people held inside detention centers?
Journalism has a strange way of reshaping you. Somewhere between deadlines and interviews and nights spent questioning whether a story was fair enough, balanced enough or impactful enough, I changed. Or more like The Highlander changed me.
I’ve been broken down and rebuilt more times than I can count. I went from someone who hated writing to someone who understands the strange beauty and frustration hidden in every sentence. Someone who knows words matter because they shape how communities remember themselves.
People sometimes describe leadership as mentorship, and I became an unwilling mentor somewhere along the way. But what often goes unsaid is that the people around me changed my life just as much. I’ve witnessed displays of solidarity that few people experience in their lifetimes. I’ve shared meals and drinks with people others would label as the “opposition,” only to discover that human beings are always more complicated than headlines make them seem.
Journalism taught me to listen, and maybe that is the greatest thing this paper ever gave to me. Now for the first time in years, I have to figure out who I am outside of being a college journalist, and that thought terrifies me.
But thank you to The Highlander for the late nights, the chaos, the arguments, the impossible deadlines and the people who became family. Thank you for giving me a place to belong where people welcomed me with a smile.
