Newspaper acts as bridge from coexistence to cooperation
I do not know if it can be cliche to write about BLADE in a senior column, but cliche or not, I need to put in my last two cents about an integral part of this publication: the people.
The dynamic of The Wooster Blade staff is a very interesting one. When I take a step back and look at it, I realize that it is a lot of people who most likely would not even know each other if it were not for The Wooster Blade.
BLADE attracts people from so many different activities that senioritis prevents me from counting, but it is a lot. They do not only coexist, they co-work. Each one has a job that he or she has to do, whether it is writing, creating graphics, or operating Adobe software. One can say they co-operate.
The point is, many students go through high school just coexisting with one another. Sometimes that is better than certain alternatives, but it is no way for an institution to function. The benefit of having students from so many backgrounds, clubs, teams and groups is that we get such varying opinions, skill sets and perspectives. All things that are not only priceless when producing a newspaper, but priceless when just having the interaction.
It does not only make the paper better, it makes us better.
These people are real with real personalities, and real emotions and real drive. They are not just gears in a machine. You can not just swap them out. They are birthed into the program through choice and drive, and each one makes the program, and people, what and who they are. It is more than just a class, or a program, or a paper, it is a process. A process that takes a sophomore who is shy, unsure of himself, and unconfident, into an editor-in-chief.
So, thank you Valerie Anderson, thank you Amber Swigart and Maddy Nacci, thank you Shiyuan Wang, thank you Hanna Morgan, and to everyone else who has had an impact on me during my tenure on Blade. And thank you BLADE, without you, I would have only coexisted with them.