On my first day, I made every mistake I could have.

I was 18 years old, fresh off of my high school newspaper and I hadn’t even started my first year of college yet. But I had an assignment: cover the opening of the North Temple viaduct. So I trudged out in the baking August heat with a Radio Shack voice recorder, a Steno pad from the grocery store and no idea what I was doing. I badgered some poor UTA employee who wasn’t authorized to speak to the media for a comment about how they “felt” about the viaduct. I obliviously stood in the frame of other photojournalists’ shots. I dutifully recorded all of my interviews, but I didn’t take any notes. And when I sat down later to write it up — in long, rambling paragraphs, with no inkling of AP style to be found in my copy, and two names misspelled — that’s when it really hit me: I really had no idea what I was doing.

That was two and a half years ago. In between, there have been more friends and mentors who have guided me along than I have column inches to name: Brandon Beifuss, Jessica Blake, Laura Schmitz, Andreas Rivera, Logan Froerer, Jake Bullinger,Jeff McGrath, Tyler “Sanchez” Pratt, Billy Yang, Elliott Bueler, Chris Reeves, Savannah Turk, Aaron Lang, Lauren Cousin, Jake Rush, Marjorie Clark and Topher Webb.

Thank you doesn’t even cover it for this year’s senior staff: Niki Harris, Anna Drysdale, Courtney Tanner, Katherine Ellis, Fran Moody, Colby Patterson, Ryan McDonald, Griffin Adams, Conor Barry, Brent Uberty, Grey Leman and Nick Ketterer. I could have never asked for a better senior staff, and I am so privileged to have learned alongside them as we collectively created exactly 150 issues this year. Here’s a shout-out to my homies down the hall at K-UTE and Absolute: Will Hatton, Kellen O’Maley, Sam Pannier and Chris Borgione.

I will forever be indebted to my professional mentors Sheena McFarland, Matt Canham, Rachel Piper, Tommy Burr, Terry Orme, Jeremy Harmon, Matt Piper, Jim Fisher, David “Dr. V” Vergobbi and Avery Holton. I will probably have to send my first-born child to The Salt Lake Tribune and my second to the Department of Communication to repay them for their help.

Eventually, Andreas taught me that public information officers are your best bet for getting comments from big organizations. Chris taught me to get the hell out of the shot. Laura taught me that the cardinal rule of voice recorders is that they always fail, so always, always take notes. When I did something wrong, I drew from the advice of my peers, from a wealth of knowledge formed over 124 years and from my own well of experience crafted over the course of these two years. I’ve got a ways to go, but this is how I learned journalism. 

When administrators step into campus newsrooms which they have made little effort to come to know in the same way that the students who inhabit them do, that’s what we lose. Change is our ball game, and that’s why in just this year alone, we’ve launched a new football app for iPhones and iPads, redesigned our website and made every staff member start using Twitter in their reporting. We are eager and hungry to push the proverbial envelope and keep moving forward, but real change is organic — if we want it to stick, it must sprout from the students who work in this newsroom and not from the top down.

This is the beauty of student journalism — it’s messy, but it’s illuminating. We thrive on our mistakes and from learning from our peers, and from our collective errors comes collective wisdom that we have real ownership over. Don’t let it be forgotten that this is a student operation — journalism for the students, of the students, and most of all, by the students.

When Anna Drysdale comes into this office for her unfortunately abbreviated term, she will take the reins at one of the most critical times in our 124-year history. She will pour her soul into it like every editor before her, but maybe she will be impeded in doing so by forces sadly beyond her control. Whatever happens to The Daily Utah Chronicle, be it magazine or newspaper, mobile app or website, tabloid or broadsheet, daily or weekly, above all, let it always be at least two things: messy and illuminating.