By Stacey Wells ’15

When I entered my sophomore year, I wasn’t involved in any clubs or organizations here at Sherwood. My mom and I argued about it (well, more of her making a decision and me resisting) that I was to join something that year and it better be interesting. I refused to stay long hours after school and with my lack of ideas, I signed up for the school newspaper. Surprisingly, this one rash decision completely changed my high school experience.

I had to take the prerequisite course ‘Journalism’ in 10^th grade, so I joined staff at the start of my junior year. My first day of newspaper consisted of some very loud and intimidating seniors, Huck saying something about InDesign (what the heck was that?) and receiving a HUGE calendar full of articles. Like almost all new experiences, it was overwhelming at first, but after a while it all started to make sense. Throughout the past two years on staff, I’ve written tons (almost too many) rough draft articles, interviewed some pretty interesting people, and learned how to work as a team in an professional-like setting.

But more importantly, I’ve learned which chairs in the newspaper office are the comfiest (the black twisty ones), how many people you can shove into one tiny office (20 students and one Huck) and the amount of time it takes for food to disappear (0.1 seconds). I’ve learned the exact number of people who forget to wear their staff t-shirts when they’re supposed to (me included) and how many words you can type into a spreadsheet before your eyes go numb (somewhere between 200 and 300). I’ve learned that the newspaper office is always open and that you can usually find an awesome staff member lounging in one of the comfy chairs.

So thank you mom for forcing me into a club, specifically this one. And thank you Newspaper for giving me memories I won’t soon forget.