October marks a year since I first had my writing published in a student publication.
Last year, for the first time, I covered an Arctic Monkeys concert I’d attended the summer before; an article I enjoyed writing. But I didn’t feel the fire in my veins until I wrote an article entitled ‘The truth about winter blues’. I laid my soul bare, detailing the physical and mental limitations caused by my own depression. Such a personal article made me realise how desperately I wanted to keep doing journalism, how badly I wanted to become Views Editor for this very newspaper.
I learnt the ropes fast; by summer I was Deputy Editor-in-Chief. I threw myself into student journalism, I couldn’t imagine how other people didn’t also eat, sleep, and breathe it.
Finding something I loved, that was separate from my course at university, was the one thing that kept me in Glasgow, that made me feel like there was a greater purpose for the ways I spent my days. For the nights I spent in the Library until 1am, the lectures I felt as though I was listening to in a foreign language, the dark afternoons in Winter when I had no one to eat lunch with. Afterall, how can you suffer a degree without seeing what it might give you in the end?
I was terrified to get involved in journalism, imposter syndrome constantly present in my mind. Being a writer means having to believe that what you’re saying is worth listening to, and that can be incredibly difficult, especially as a young woman.
The most intelligent people I have ever met have been women, most of which don’t actually believe the full extent of their brilliance. The talented and intelligent men I have met all believe that they are talented and intelligent; I wish that for young women too.
Journalism is based on facts; it reveals the truth. But it also involves vulnerability, the strength to speak up and say what you believe- even if it’s not always popular.
As journalists, we don’t write to be popular or to receive praise, we write because we’re covering what we deem important. If my year in student journalism has taught me anything, it’s taught me to stand my ground.
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