Personal Narrative

Most people, when they think of The Standard, picture it only as a student publication bridging the community to the wider world. A publication simply beckoning ambitious, over-achieving writers. But I’m on The Standard, and I know every wrinkle beneath the smooth facade like the palm of my hand: the precipitous slope of procrastination, the gentle rise and fall of the workload between print cycles, running over to P-101 for “just a few minutes.” The effervescent laughter of staff echoing off the NSPA award-filled walls. The smell of papers hot off the press. To me, the High School is almost unrecognizable without the blanket of community voices wrapping the school in its embrace.

To be an editor on The Standard is to find solace in discomfort. October 2020. It was a Thursday. Parent-teacher conferences. I’d just hit snooze on my alarm, lazily rolling over beneath the stack of blankets, reveling in the prospect of an additional hour of sleep. The world had other plans for me. My phone hummed. At first, it was only once, perhaps a message notification from a friend. Then, the consistent buzzing materialized. Someone was calling me. I rolled over, groaning, and turned my phone to reveal an incoming call from Emily Forgash, my Editor-in-Chief.

“Grace,” she said hastily. “We need your help.”

Throwing on a pair of jeans and my sneakers, I grabbed the Canon 5D camera and azure reporter’s notebook sprawled across my desk before scrambling out the door. Shoes untied, hair tousled – passerbyers gazed at me quizzically before averting their eyes. When I stumbled into P-101 clutching that camera to my chest, that hour of lost sleep somehow felt inconsequential.

It was merely a few months into my role as Culture Editor: Online and the staff was working to produce the 2020 Election Special Edition. Well, technically not the staff – namely the managing editors, a junior editor and myself. The five of us huddled around one desktop, eyes glued to the “Election Editorial” title atop the InDesign file. Every few moments, my eyes fleetingly landed on the analog clock lying adjacent. Thirty minutes and 32 seconds. With every second elapsed, the “send to press” button loomed. My eyes lingered on every word. One subjective, politically-charged phrase and our journalistic integrity would be contested. Heat from editors’ shoulders reverberated off the walls. Adrenaline coursed through every vein.

At 10 minutes and 32 seconds, each sans serif letter had distorted and merged into one. Every muscle in my body tensed in protest of the ticking clock. Muddled thoughts permeated my mind. The shouts of other editors eventually surged through my ears, resounding off the walls. The two of them screeched at each other, fumbling over the laptop in protest of the other’s sentence.

Forty-two seconds. We hit send. For the first time, I studied the group around me. Joy burst out of every pair of eyes. We lept from our seats, uncontrollably bearing sprawled arms and wide smiles. I ambled home with the edges of my lips dangerously – and perhaps involuntarily – pulling upwards.

In all its convoluted glory, The Standard prevails and its work consumes. A first-semester junior, I drowned in the deep end as Lead Culture Editor, managing an influx of thirty articles. Days were consumed with editing, creating graphics, organizing section lists, communicating with co-editors. I remember opening the door of P-101 without consciously realizing I’d wandered over. I didn’t glance up once, just walked into my journalism adviser’s office and shut the door. The tears streamed down my cheeks like the first rainstorm of July. Yet, minutes later, I sat back down at my desktop, reporter’s notebook in hand.

Maybe I’ve fallen in love. It seems the only feasible explanation. There’s just something intangible about the publication. The community, perhaps? The implicit power in the arc of each word? The blissful enigmas?

Through reporting, I’ve listened to hundreds of stories: a girl grieving the loss of a family member in India at the height of the pandemic, a boy struggling with anorexia nervosa, a Zara-lover grappling with the environmental devastation of fast fashion. In each conversation, I become more beguiled by each source and each story.

I’ve found that stories untold are seeds lying fallow. Spurring change in my community simply by communicating them is addictive. Even small stories can form big ripples. Those moments of change reaffirm why I write. My stories unveil truths that can nudge the world. 

As Editor-in-Chief, I lead my team of 60 in listening to all kinds of narratives, embracing complexities and controversy. In the process of listening, we exchange, consider and reevaluate our own perspectives. Reporting fosters wonder and doubt, dissatisfaction with the status quo. It calls on empathy, opening up to others’ minds. This human experience reveals not just how things are but how they could be. I push my team to understand human narratives in the context of truth’s necessity and our role in uncovering it.

The Standard transcends “just journalism.” It’s a team. While being a journalist is something I love, the real power of The Standard is what we accomplish together. In the moments when my eyelids threatened to shut and every bone in my body screamed for me to give up, the team is what binds.

When I return to that room, it feels like I’ve never left. It feels like I could sit at that desktop for days. It feels like I’m that 14-year-old girl once again, stepping into P-101 for the first time blind to the notion it would soon become her home. Blind to the notion that, one day, she would stand at the helm of the publication guiding her team in sharing stories that might just move the needle.

To say I’m a journalist is not to write for The Standard, but to harness narratives as a force for good. To say I report stories that are truthful and timely and beautiful. To say I belong to a group of people who love the smell of ink.