I can remember my sophomore year walking past the news room and seeing the staff working after school to transcribe, write, and interview all the time. In my entire school career I had never really been interested in a class before to the extent of that class. So far, I had done just what was expected of me and left with an A, and I could not have been more happy with that. But as I looked into that class near the end of that school year, I knew that I just wanted to try it, see something new, be finally creative in a class with the idea “This Story is Yours.”  As I received my letter to join at the end of my sophomore year, those thoughts were running through my head, and they still were as I entered the room this year.

One thing came to me as a shocking reality immediately. This class was hard for me, really hard. I had never thought this class would challenge every single fault it seemed I had, every single thing that kept me from being a better student, a better person, a better worker. In my life, I had never been a people person, or particularly good at scheduling or planning anything. All of a sudden I was thrust into something I wasn’t used to, a class that I barely tread water through.

Don’t think I learned right away either, up until even today I struggle with things so simple they’re painful. Asking another staff member to help with something, scheduling an interview at a convenient time, asking my adviser to find someone’s class for me. Throughout my time in school I had never realized until now how absolutely solitary I was, and just how anxious it made me to ask others for help.

I felt embarrassed. Every time I missed a deadline it was my fault, no ifs, ands, or buts. It was hard to try and power through an entire school year with the idea that I kind of suck. Once I hit month three or four I was almost on the brink of collapse, everything that I did was too little too late, and my attempts to fix things never resulted in less work, only increasing later and later into the year. Truly, I had never felt more lost and confused about a class that was what I thought was what I needed.

Truthfully, my life this year would have been so much easier, so much less stressful, without this class in it. But I honestly think that I’m a better person for taking it, and I definitely don’t regret it. Over this year I’ve fought with myself over and over to try and make deadlines, and schedule interviews, and be consistent for others. I’ve failed at those tasks probably more than I’ve succeeded in them, and for that I felt true responsibility and humility. This class, being a journalist, is the hardest thing I’ve done in school not because it forced me to go outwards like I thought, even though that was pretty hard to, it forced me to look inwards and make real change to my own principles, to see what matters to me.

I don’t want to let anyone down, I don’t want to be afraid to talk, I have always thought that. Because of this class, I was able to start finally looking inwards, and make real change, and maybe because of that, I can make change outwards, too.