The Daily Aztec may just seem like the piles of paper that fill up the red bins around campus, or what The Show uses as confetti in pregame rituals.
If only people knew everything that went on behind the scenes to make the paper.
I got the chance to serve as the assistant sports editor in the fall and as the sports editor in spring, and not only learned so many new things about sports and journalism, but what this school has to offer.
At a school with as many students at SDSU, it’s easy to slip through the cracks and have trouble finding ways to get involved.
Never in my four years at SDSU did I feel more connected than when I made my way down to the basement of EBA, swiped my RedId card and got to work.
The Daily Aztec newsroom does not look like anything special to the naked eye.
There’s not a lot of cell phone service, sometimes the air condition doesn’t work and our appliances may not be top-notch.
But for some reason whenever I had a minute of free time, I’d find myself in the newsroom, whether I had work to do or not.
I didn’t know many people on staff before joining the editorial board, but within a couple weeks I would walk into the newsroom and was genuinely excited to see whoever was there and spark up a conversation.
I would look forward to our weekly meetings Tuesday morning’s because all of the editorial staff was there and it felt more like a family reunion than anything else.
For people who don’t know, the landscape of journalism is changing by the minute.
As a staff, we were tasked with help push this newspaper that is over 100 years old into a digital age where online content is just as, or more, important than the actual paper.
Not only did we accomplish our goal, we knocked it out of the park.
As a team, we dealt with problems that most Daily Aztec staffs never had to deal with, like the website crashing just as I’m about to press publish for a men’s basketball game story.
There’s not a group of people that I would have rather faced those issues with than the editorial staff here.
Even in our most stressful moments, we were able to persevere and find solutions as a team.
Joining the staff as a senior, I thought that the friends I had already made would be the ones I’d most closely tie my college experience to.
I was wrong.
The memories I’ve made as a staff writer and editor at The Daily Aztec are ones that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
I got my first chance to sit in a press box, covered my first bowl game and covered the NIT.
But besides all of that, I gained a second family to go through this experience that we call college.
Shout out to Matt and Kelly for hiring me and to Patrick for showing me the way last semester.
