By Emily Fox · Editor-in-Chief
My sophomore year, I wrote my first editorial about how I’d been wrestling with misattributing my value to how successful I could be.
Like most teenagers, I was conditioned to believe that unless I achieved superior grades, landed the highest paying job and rose through the rankings, I wasn’t working hard enough. I was a cog in the efficiency machine, and it left me deeply unsatisfied and frustrated.
In my editorial, I concluded these standards were baseless, hopeless and meaningless in light of what the Lord has done for me. My value comes from the price He was willing to pay for me, and my work is made meaningful by who I do it for, not from professional commendations and a fancy title.
I remembered that editorial when I was thinking about my first week as editor-in-chief. I was full of energy, and I had endless plans to take the paper to the next level. But on the other side of it, I didn’t do some of those things. Classes picked up, balancing my work for the paper and my homework was hard and the deadlines were harder.
I was tempted to be discouraged and to once again feel like I hadn’t done enough when I remembered that first editorial. The value of my time on The Collegian staff hasn’t come from anything I’ve done, but instead it’s come from what the Lord has taught me through this experience, so I thought I’d share a few of those lessons with you.
I’d like to say I’m the one who finishes the paper every Wednesday night, but more often than not, this paper finishes me. I’ve spent an average of 16 hours a week working on The Collegian, and 14 of those hours are on Wednesday. Most weeks, InDesign fights me tooth and nail until 4:30 in the morning when I finally call it done and export the file.
Just a few hours later, I trudge back to Crawford Tower to polish it up and send the PDF off for printing. Then I do as much of my homework as I can in the 20 minutes I have left before I go to class, looking like some creature you’d see in “The Walking Dead.”
The production timeline of The Collegian is not conducive to perfectionist tendencies. Often, I’ve had to make sacrifices to deliver the final product to the stands; occasionally, that even means missing a class or assignment. Working on the paper has taught me that, contrary to what society tells us, we cannot do it all.
But I’ve learned to be okay with it because it forces me to remember my reliance on God, and He’s carried me through each failure, frustration and tough day every single time.
I confess on Friday mornings, I comb through the paper and look for missed commas, misaligned text and misspellings. The worst mistake I ever made was in our biggest issue of the year. I forgot to delete a giant textbox with a note I’d left my advisor off the PDF in the Homecoming issue.
I was horrified. I just about fired myself. But the fast-paced environment forced me to suck it up and move on. I didn’t have time to wallow in self-pity. The next issue was coming out on Friday, and I had articles to write.
This job taught me to be more comfortable with my mistakes, and as it turns out, though they broke my little perfectionist heart, mistakes aren’t actually the end of the world.
The people I’ve worked with changed me as much as the work. I’ve been on staff with people from different backgrounds than mine and with views conflicting with mine. This experience was invaluable for me because I learned how to see the world from different perspectives, and I believe that I have a greater capacity for empathy because of that.
To return to my first editorial, the value of the past few years hasn’t come from any recognized achievement: It comes from little interactions and inconveniences that have shaped me into the person that I am now.
The woman who will walk across the commencement stage is not the same person who moved into MAP room 40 in 2022, and thank God for that. This person is more content with what she’s been given and more confident in her own skin. Most importantly, she knows that if something is God’s will, it will come to pass no matter how many mistakes she makes.
And now, there are a couple people I’d like to thank before I sign off as editor-in-chief:
First, I want to thank my roommates, Julianna Jacobs and Mackenzie Di Cello, for supporting me in every capacity over the past few years.
Thanks for reading the paper every week and cutting out all my editorials and hanging them on the fridge. You guys are the best.
Thank you to my boyfriend, Evan McCormick, for visiting me in the Tower each week for a much-needed brain break and for praying for me every Wednesday night. Thanks for being content to sit behind me offering moral support (and playing a little bit of chess) while I’m agonizing over jump tags. I love you so much.
We’re all writers here, but I can’t possibly put everything I’ve learned from Nick Hildebrand into a few words. What I can say is that Nick’s guidance has equipped me to leave and do whatever the Lord has in store for my career, which I think is the best confirmation of a job well done that a mentor can get.
And finally, my managing editor. What I’ll remember the most about Kathryna is her joyful, servant heart. Kathryna’s joy is the type that Paul writes about in Philippians: the kind that comes from knowing the Lord and that cannot be destroyed by mere circumstances. Kathryna was there for my toughest moments, and just being near her made the world a little less dark. I have never met anyone so patient and attuned to the needs of people around her. She looks for the Lord in all things, and her love for Him is evident in all she does. It has been my personal great joy to work with her.
