BY KURT MARTONE, NEWS EDITOR
I know how you feel. You have an entire page of these thank you’s in front of you, and as you skim my headline you are muttering to yourself: “Oh no! Another?” Do not worry dear reader, because I felt a similar disdain when I was told that I had to put my thoughts on this page and pen a teary-eyed goodbye to all of you. I am a news writer, so that I do not have to have any original thoughts inside this head of mine, and only present what others say to me. I like it. It is comfortable.
Time to get uncomfortable.
I picked up my third ever copy of The Bona Venture last year. I read the entire paper in one sitting, folded it, placed it on my desk and said to myself, “I can do this.” I shot off a quick email to Cammie Dutchess, the then Editor-in-Chief, asking to write. She asked me what I wanted to write. I sent back: “News, please!” Big mistake. I was given two short days to turn an 800-word story on students volunteering in service programs after graduation.
I had never written for a paper before, I had no clue how to format, what words to use or not to use, if conjunctions were allowed and every other AP style nitpick that I still get ragged on. (I avoided Denny Wilkins as a teacher for only one reason, I never had room in my schedule for him.)
But, here I am, one year and two months after my first ever story for the BV, saying goodbye.
It has been an incredible journey. One that is not so full of memories as some of the other editors taking off to explore different things in their college career but, this paper still shares the same amount of love to me that it does to them, and I do to it.
Growing up, I never pictured myself being a journalist. I never imagined the incredible wonders of pikas, line spacing, fonts and formatting that we editors have the privilege to do. I worked away at the computers that store our words in the basement of the Reily Center for too long. (Think of all the shows I missed out on; at least I never missed out on the memories.)
Thank you BV! Thank you all for such a wonderful time. I especially want to thank Cassidey, who as a freshman edited my baby journalism, and still continues to slam the massive AP style book on my desk whenever I complain about not knowing how to do something. I want to thank Tucker who has been teaching me how sentences work. (I know that the previous sentence is passive and therefore illegal.) I also want to thank Tom, whose EIC jersey now hangs in the rafters, for making BV nights more fun than they should have been. Thank you to everyone that I have not named here, you all are a blast to work with. Hadley, the next News Editor, it’s in good hands, don’t drop it.
