A little less than a year to the day that I accepted the position of editor of The Nicholls Worth, my tenure filling the hot seat of this university’s student-run newspaper is coming to a close.

When I took this job, I learned many things in the first few weeks, one of which was that the last few editors of The Nicholls Worth liked to leave quotes all over the glass cube that we get to call our office inside the Student Publications Building. For a short period of time, I had written on the wall of this office (facing in, which drove the staff crazy as they thought it should have faced the other way) a quote from another college newspaper editor at another university who had to deal with one of the toughest stories that could ever come across a student editor’s desk.

Lexi Belculfine was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Collegian at Penn State University when the Jerry Sandusky story broke in 2011. In an advice article to college newspaper editors in The Washington Post, Belculfine gave her own advice to those at the head of a college paper.

“Don’t sleep. You only have one year to make the paper (or blog) better than you found it, to have a life-changing impact on your staff and to provide your community with the public service this job is rooted in. You’ll sleep when you graduate; I promise,” Belculfine said.

This quote tells more about this job than anyone who hadn’t held the position themselves could. College newspaper editors do not sleep. We cannot afford to sleep. Sleeping is a luxury that is not able to be cut into the day. After all, we are still students while running, what I believe to be, the most stressful, fast-paced student organization on any college campus.

However, I also do not think there is a job on this campus more rewarding than being the editor of The Nicholls Worth.

In my two years working for the paper, I have met more people than I could have ever imagined. Writing for the paper isn’t just going out and getting the stories, I have developed lasting connections with some of the people I have interviewed and none of this would have been possible had I not applied to work as a sports writer last year and as the editor this year. And to this day, I do not believe there is a greater joy to a journalist than finding out that a story you have written has touched or impacted the lives of others in a positive manner.

College for me didn’t follow the four-year plan. I graduated from high school in 2009, went to Louisiana State University as a freshman that fall and transferred to L.E. Fletcher Technical Community College because of tuition hikes and wanting to be closer to home before finally starting at Nicholls in spring 2012. I feel that being the editor of this paper followed the same unpredictable path as my college career.

Technically, this job is put under the umbrella of student employment, but there were many times when I was very much more a newspaper editor than I was a student. I spent many nights lying awake worrying about deadlines and ensuring that every issue was packed with newsworthy content and I can’t count the number of times I’ve left the office at midnight on a Tuesday only to be back at the office by six in the morning the next day.

Many people on this campus do not understand the work that is put in week in and week out in the Student Publications office. There are no breaks, no time for rest and every week we have to put our necks on the line when the most recent issue of The Nicholls Worth hits the stands.

Fortunately, I came into the job following an editor who completely revamped the design of the paper and brought it to full color. Unfortunately, the entire editorial staff would be new and outside of our design and layout editors and one of our copy editors, only one writer was returned for this school year.

During the summer, partially spent redesigning the paper’s website and recruiting writers, I decided to commit to running the newspaper the way that I said I would when I interviewed for the position last May. Not only would that mean pushing the staff, but it would mean pushing the envelope on what type of things the campus was used to seeing in The Nicholls Worth.
I knew deep down that it might have been a bad idea to challenge the status quo. Pissing people off isn’t always the best idea for journalists, especially college journalists who don’t always get the respect they are due. However, that brings me back to another quote I heard during my freshman year at LSU: “Scared journalists don’t make it.” One year and a lot of praise for what this staff has done later, I can say that it was the right decision to push that envelope off the table.

This was, of course, not without its problems. Every week, I seemed to get a new lesson in journalism. I vividly remember the concerned mother of a student calling to tell me that she did not send her son to a school that would allow its newspaper to publish a column about penis size. I also still remember the concerned grandmother of the same student calling to tell me that she was going to have me fired because of the same column. Believe it or not, these types of calls were the highlight of my Thursdays and Fridays for the fall semester when everyone was still adjusting.

I pushed this staff to be everything journalists should be: unbiased, fair, accurate and unapologetically honest. I knew that we were doing our job when we were getting the types of calls I mentioned above. We were doing our jobs if people were angry and talking, and both of those things were quite alright with me.
Like with any job, this year came with its ups and downs. I spent way too many hours in my office trying to fix everything and skipped way too many meals because I would go from class to the office to work without stopping in between, but in the end it was all worth it. I’ve gotten an experience that not many people can say they’ve had.

To the staff, I am proud of those who have stuck around through this tough year. No matter how much I pushed you all to cover the hard stories and to make sure to ask the hard questions, you all rose to the occasion every single time. It’s normal for people to credit the editor for the quality of the newspaper, but you all wrote the bulk of the stories, you all edited the stories and you all laid the stories out in the issues. You deserve all the credit and more for what the paper has been this year. I couldn’t have done any of this without all of you. One of my goals this year was to leave this paper in a better place than I found it, and I know with the amount you all have grown this year, there is no limit to what you can achieve in the future.
To Nicki Boudreaux, the director of student publications and advisor to the Nicholls Worth, I would like to first apologize for causing the aforementioned “concerned grandmother” to dub you a madam in a whorehouse for allowing us to publish a sex column. Jokes aside, you had the faith in me to allow me to serve as editor of this newspaper and I hope I have repaid it this year. I could not have achieved the things that I wanted to without knowing that you were backing me, no matter how many people on or off campus thought I was pushing the wrong button. I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity you gave me this year.

For the last year, I’ve been a non-stop ball of stress about stories, deadlines and people angry about what we were writing. There are a select few people still on this campus who know what it is like to work under the pressure of deadlines at the Nicholls Worth, juggling school and the paper with stories coming at you sometimes two at a time. Not since my sports writer days have I been able to say that I was free on a Tuesday or didn’t have to scramble to pick up the pieces of a story that fell through on a Wednesday. But next week, I just might be able to partake in a two-for-Tuesday knowing that I won’t have to come into the office.

Now, as I sit in my office looking back at the last two years of my life spent working at The Nicholls Worth, I know the memories I made here are ones that I won’t forget. From every chair race, even the ones that Michael Hotard cheated in, to the crazy time spent at convention in New Orleans last year, and the insaneness of being stuck in an office with the same people every Tuesday until God knows when, I will cherish these memories and the friends I have made during my time here.

I still remember when I began here two years ago, being kicked into the deep end of reporting with two stories and little explanation of how to get the job. I’ve covered it all from bad defensive play to head coaches suddenly resigning to a certain governor destroying our state’s higher education budget. The many issues of the Nicholls Worth that I have been a part of will serve as a reminder to the things that I have accomplished in my time at the paper.

So, I’ll leave you with another quote that I once had written on the whiteboards in our office. Another quote that I lived by as editor of the Nicholls Worth and one that I think perfectly explains the journalism profession, even at the college level.

“They’re called ‘facts’, and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don’t care at all what you think of my motives,” Glenn Greenwald said.
And now, with my last sentence in the Nicholls Worth, I will bid you all a goodnight as I am going to be graduating and it is time for me to catch up all the sleep I missed.

P.S. Because I was never able to say this before, to all the English majors who fine tooth comb the paper every Thursday, applications are available in the student publications office. You can get paid for that.
Now, I can sleep.