Horace Greeley, a 19th-century editor of the New York Tribune, once said that “Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.”

And that’s what journalism does for me. This practice is a strange one. It’s a stress-builder and a time-consumer, but it’s also the biggest and best source of joy and fulfillment that I could ever ask for.

My time at CHS, and especially at The Inkblot, has been trying and difficult. It’s been amazing and impassioned. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

In junior year, I joined the newspaper for the first time, and I worked my way from reporter to Assistant Features Editor and then ultimately to co-editor-in-chief, alongside my best friend Anna.

This year at The Inkblot has really been something special. As a club, we’ve reported on so many amazing, critical topics, like gender equality and self-esteem and charitable efforts inside the school. We published the first-ever back-to-school issue and two 16-page issues. We brought the Arts section to life with the help of our fabulous editorial board, launched The Inkblot’s Snapchat and broadcast the first episode of InkTV.

This editorial is a reflection. So, I won’t leave out the hours Anna and I spent at Starbucks touching up InDesign pages. I won’t leave out the missed deadlines (there were several) and the last-minute calls for quotes to add into stories that were just a little too short.

But I am so proud to have been a part of a newspaper like this one. I am constantly inspired by the amazing, talented student journalists who work on this paper. Mrs. Mulshine has been not only the adviser to a club I cherish so much, but she’s also become my mentor and a confidante. I have gained so much experience and learned so many lessons – one of which is word count. I’m approaching mine very quickly.

For some reason, it just doesn’t feel like my entire journalism experience can be summed up into 350 words.

– Cayla Harris

outgoing Editor-in-Chief

Mine is a cautionary tale.

If you’re anything like me, you set goals for yourself and you work tirelessly until you achieve them. I’m a type A – like most of us here at CHS – and I crave success. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but sometimes you change in the process of meeting your goals, and you have to acknowledge they no longer suit you. I didn’t.

As a freshman, I decided that I would become the Editor-in-Chief of The Inkblot come my senior year. The position, I thought, was the most prestigious CHS had to offer. It was an honor that I wholeheartedly sought for myself. I worked hard, rising in the ranks each year until I did exactly that.

Now I have to be honest. Sometime during my junior year, I realized journalism wasn’t my passion. I knew I loved to write, but I felt constrained by all the rules. It wasn’t fun for me anymore, but I kept thinking I had come so far and worked so hard – I couldn’t just give up.

So I found myself locked into a responsibility I soon discovered I didn’t really want. I didn’t want to write last-minute articles when writers fell through or stay up all night editing or spend my breaks at work fixing the layout of pages. It was an incredibly amount of effort for a job that provided very little personal satisfaction. Sure, I glowed as I distributed the paper, but the feeling was short-lived.

As I reflect, I know I wouldn’t change a thing. The intangibles – the relationships, the memories, the lessons – are invaluable to me, and I could not be more grateful. Cayla and I became best friends, and I mastered the Adobe Suite while toiling away at the truck. Mrs. Mulshine made me laugh so hard I cried on multiple occasions, Tommy and I actually sobbed together when we missed deadline, I watched as staff writers found their voices and I became better informed about the world around me.

Above all, my experience with The Inkblot has made me more cognizant of myself, of my dreams and desires and my new goals.

– Anna Robinson

outgoing Editor-in-Chief