Three years, 41 bylines and three editorial board positions later, my time at The Quinnipiac Chronicle is coming to a close.

Three years ago, I walked into School of Business Room 123 for the first time, where Chronicle meetings are held, as a first-year journalism major knowing I wanted to write for the paper, but not knowing exactly about what.

I decided to join the group of people sitting in the bottom right corner of the room, the news section. I began covering on-campus news and learned how to do event coverage for guest speaker events. I wrote about different topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic, study abroad opportunities and Quinnipiac University’s blue light system.

But, really, my favorite was always the feature stories about different professors and students on campus. I always enjoyed getting to learn more about people and their accomplishments.

Being a member of The Chronicle staff taught me how to be a journalist. It’s one thing to learn about these skills in the classroom, but now I really got to put them into practice.

Writing for news really put me out of my comfort zone. It taught me how to take risks and cover stories that may seem difficult or challenging.

In the fall of 2022, I joined the e-board as a copy editor where I learned what it felt like to be in a real newsroom. I learned how to collaborate with other writers and editors and how to really enhance my editing skills.

I always enjoyed writing news, but I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. A year later in fall 2023, I became the associate editor of the arts & life section. Here, I really got to focus more on two of my favorite types of journalism: features and event coverage.

Some of my favorite events I got to cover were QTHON — a 10-hour dance marathon — Fall Fest and Wake the Giant, two of Quinnipiac’s annual concerts. I got to interview different musical artists, find out how these events were planned and talk to students about their experience at these events.

Just this past semester I moved up to arts & life editor, where I began to write more creatively about topics that interested me such as food and fashion, and attempted to get out of the more rigid style of news writing.

Working in arts & life has taught me so much over the last year and helped me to really figure out what kinds of journalism I want to do in the future.

I would always look forward to coming into the media suite on Tuesdays to work with my fellow former Arts & life Editor Zoe Leone and former Associate Arts & life Editor Krystal Miller. Together, we were able to do some really great things within the section.

I’ll always be thankful to The Chronicle and my fellow editors and mentors for teaching me how to put my love of writing into practice, how to cover events, how to be a good editor and how to take risks when covering a particular event or topic that may seem intimidating.

Though they may have been tedious at the time, I’ll miss the long hours in the media suite and waiting to go get a copy of the paper in print on Wednesdays.

I know the future of arts & life will be in good hands with Arts & Life Editor Amanda Madera and Associate Arts & Life Editors Gina Lorusso and Grace Conneely-Nolan. I look forward to seeing what they do with the section.

To anyone who is considering writing for The Chronicle, go for it, you will learn so much along the way and have the most memorable experiences.