I had no idea we had a school newspaper until I got an urgent text from my friend Hana begging everyone in the group chat to check out her feature article on Madame Safavi, a French teacher who isn’t at West Po anymore.

Of course, I was happy for her, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little jealous that the stuff I had to write wasn’t displayed to everyone in the school via bulk email. That’s why I had journalism locked in to be my sophomore year filler elective, but I never could have guessed I would like it enough to major in it, let alone do it for the rest of high school.

Whenever somebody I’m around brings up journalism, it’s to congratulate me, either on me doing it in college or on whatever article I just posted. I always appreciate it, but I feel the fondest journalism memories I have are the ones that deserve the opposite of congratulations. I’ll always remember getting mud on my sneakers during my first time passing out papers in homeroom and having to rinse them off in the bathroom while the friends I was with got laughed out of the Pulley Center cafe. I’ll also never forget when they put us to work at a JMU journalism camp by making us play freeze tag (shoutout Ali and Mercedes).

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that everybody could benefit from being in the reporter mindset. More often than not, journalism will put you in a situation that makes you look dumb. I don’t think I need to bring up more examples, but sometimes you just have to take it and focus on the prize. We all love to one-up everyone around us, but it’s also refreshing to just own up to a personal failure or mistake every once in a while. When you’re locked in on a goal, there’s no room to beat yourself up no matter how funny you may look trying to complete it. That’s why reporters are always doing stuff.

That’s my favorite thing about journalism. It may be the most regretted major and probably the most thankless job, but you’re never not doing something. That something could be anything from going someplace new or meeting someone new. I wouldn’t know some of my favorite people without the class, and that’s exactly what makes me want to do it for the better part of my life. You really don’t have to be good with words or crazy about newspapers to do this job, you just have to be flexible.

I want to shout out my journalism day ones Jaylan Post and Ben Price. Without them and our other journalism GOATs like Phoebe and Emmie, I doubt I’d want to keep doing this in the future as much. I also want to shout out whoever called in the bomb threat, who should no doubt be locked up, but led to the most viewed article in West Po Wire history, so I guess just trust the process.

Finally, none of this would be possible without Ms. Cooper, who has really put all her effort into making The Wire what it is. I’m inconsistent, so thanks for being patient with me and always whipping us into shape just enough to always get a paper out on time. I’m gonna miss everything about 2nd period, whether it’s getting a rundown of recent worldwide events or the drawing of that face that’s split into four separate faces and says “Future” at the top.

As I’m setting my alarm clock for school one final time, it’s really hitting me that this is the end of an era. I couldn’t think of a better group of people to end it with though.