Bragging rights

“Are you working somewhere while you’re in school?” Michelle, my partner Hunter’s aunt, asks me.

“Yeah. I work for my school’s newspaper,” I respond.

Hunter’s mom adds onto the conversation, “She doesn’t just ‘work for the paper,’ she’s the editor of the paper!”

“Heh heh, yeah. I’m editor-in-chief this year,” I say.

Michelle starts congratulating me and talking about how amazing it is that I have a job with so much responsibility and time commitment. I stand there smiling and nodding, feeling a little uncomfortable that I’m the center of attention for the moment.

This kind of scene happens to me a lot—not necessarily with people asking about my job, but asking me about anything I do. I feel like my life isn’t really interesting enough to waste people’s time on, so I give minimal details unless they keep asking questions.

But this particular instance felt different for me. After learning that I was the editor-in-chief of my school paper, Michelle kept asking questions about the paper, the other editors, the production process—everything. She had me show her how to get to the website and follow us on Facebook, and she started reading my columns and other articles we published.

Suddenly, the act of me trying to be unselfish, by not telling people the full details of what I do, became selfish.

I work at an amazing newspaper with amazing student journalists who do amazing things, and that deserves to be shared.

I spend hours upon hours striving to make The Sentry as good of an experience it can be for anyone involved with it, whether that be writer or reader. I have stayed in the office until 4 a.m. with other students making sure our paper was ready for print, because accurate reporting was more important than a good night’s sleep.

Working at The Sentry is hard work, but I’m not complaining. We have a staff of 100% student writers, photographers, and editors working every day to make sure The Sentry is serving the campus community as effectively as possible. And it would be selfish of me not to brag about how awesome that is.

I have found that even if it is a little uncomfortable, it’s okay to brag sometimes. I mean, don’t be annoying about it. But even though day-to-day it might feel like you aren’t doing anything extraordinary, because it feels normal to you, we are all doing some pretty cool things here, and that deserves to be shared.