I'm surprised.
Yes, actually it's my last year to ever be in our school paper. The inexperienced me in freshman year decided to take the leap and try out. I've been stuck ever since.
It's not easy. You have to embrace deadlines, adviser rants, your parent rants, and the schoolwork dead ahead as you plunge yourself in sleepless nights to just finish the paper. There are only 20 of us, doing our best to write despite the fact that we still have to juggle our schoolwork and articles. It's tough, frustrating, and an emotional ride.
I've been sleeping inside our library since sophomore year. It's not easy, because often I shout at myself for facing this head-on in the first place.
The years were tough, especially since a new principal took over in our sophomore year. She didn't want our adviser. She wanted to act like a know-it-all and fuck up our paper. By the end of our junior year, the blow came: Our SPA was resigning.
Dejected we were in our senior year, and we acted like nothing happened. We went back to our ordinary school lives. We didn't try hooking up with new articles since then.
I thought that being free from the extra work was enough. But I missed it. I really missed it, and I often cry because Shit like this can actually happen in real life. I can actually miss the things I hate.
Yesterday, while I was with that adviser to check the area we're going to improve as club input, she then blabbed on about the paper. And of how, we can still join, despite the DSPC (Division Schools Press Conference) being THIS FRIDAY. We had no paper. Everyone had already settled down. I was wide-eyed, unresponsive, and baffled at it all.
We're really going to wing it?
After all the things she said (it involved my classmate who demoralized the SPA unintentionally) she left me pondering at the mound of crap I'm going to put myself into.
Did I really want to go back to the hell I try to leave behind?
I beamed. I was such an idiot because I ACTUALLY WANTED TO JOIN. I WANTED TO WIN.
And...
My other fellow journalists were as ecstatic as I was. And after our midterms, we plunged on this morning to our adviser and told her to join.
She looked like we had invented a wild, unbelievable cock-and-bull story about chickens flying into outer space.
She actually nearly panicked. The contest is TOMORROW. Can we do it? OMG, can we really?
We had been consistently the champion for 16 years. We had only one day to prepare, and usually we take WEEKS before we actually know what we're writing about.
Oh god, what shit.
The pressure heaped on me the moment she made me realize that what we wanted was impossible. After this, we had to construct a paper before December. This shit was unbelievable. What the heck are we trying to prove?
And we said yes to it all. We're jumping into the open fire now. We already had everybody rounded up. Broadcasting people will practice until nightfall. And it's the hardest shit we have to take care of.
So... it's really now or never. Wish me luck, to whoever's reading this.