I worked for my junior high’s newspaper, and honestly, I hated every second. It was the worst experience. Thinking up articles to write, having little to no guidance when it came to writing them, laying out pages to get the paper ready to print. It was all exhausting. I swore after that class ended I would never do anything remotely related to journalism.

Fast-forward to May 2017. I am a senior about to graduate with a B.A. in communication, working as a news reporter for The Daily Evergreen and president for WSU’s Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) chapter. Time since junior high has been a roller coaster.

There have been more ups than downs, thankfully. After bouncing around between a few different majors, I finally found my fit: the one area of study I swore I would never touch again.

Once I settled on communication with the Murrow College, I found myself joining several different organizations to figure out where I fit. I joined the first Murrow Bootcamp and toyed with radio and broadcast journalism, and became a member of PRSSA after I decided to specialize in strategic communication, becoming our chapter’s president one year later.

Out of all these experiences that have changed my life, working as a news reporter for The Daily Evergreen has to be one of the best.

This is without a doubt one of the most time-consuming jobs I have ever had. More than once I’d stay up all night working on articles, or homework that I hadn’t finished because I was working on articles. Some nights were sleep-deprived, tear-fueled, stress-induced nightmares.

I know, it sounds awful. I’m not going to lie, sometimes it was. Nevertheless, it was also humbling, rewarding and more fulfilling than words can express. Working as a journalist has taught me so much about myself, the first being that I actually love working as a journalist. It is chaotic and stressful and what I hope to continue doing after I graduate.

Breaking news nights are the ones I enjoyed the most. I spent days in the newsroom, researching and interviewing for the ASWSU election edition, helping create the website detailing each candidate and finally launching it for students to review before they cast their votes.

Joining The Daily Evergreen has opened so many doors for me, and allowed me to grow as a writer and see my work published. I have more confidence in my ability as a writer, and I have a family in the newsroom I will miss more than anything else when I graduate.

Working every day in the same space, spending day and night around the same people, it is hard not to form a bond with them. I have only worked with the Evergreen since the fall 2016 semester, and the people here are already like family to me. I would not want to walk to Flix at 1 a.m. singing classic rock songs with anyone else.

So as my time at WSU comes to an end, here is the best advice I can give: Your time as an undergraduate will fly by faster than you realize. There will be tears, sleepless nights and hard decisions to make before you’re ready to graduate. It is going to take time to find where you fit in, and that’s okay. When you find your people, hold on to them. They are what’s going to make your time here the best years of your life.