Wait, how did I get here?
This is a genuine question, because the last two years have flown by at such a suspiciously fast rate, that I am almost certain there has been some sort of divine mistake.
Until I submitted my pitch to write this article, it had not completely dawned on me that this was it; I am a senior. I am leaving. This is, indeed, the end.
Perhaps this passage of time is a testament to just how impactful The Montclarion has been on my life. Two years ago, before Babee Garcia — the Entertainment Editor at the time — had stirred my interest in the paper, I wasn’t exactly in the right state of mind. Sure, I liked to write a bunch of words in my spare time, so joining a newspaper only made sense, but things were weird back then.
At the time, I was alone, and even more pressingly, I was fairly depressed. I was quite good at keeping everything bottled up inside without a real care in the world about what was actually happening to me. I wasn’t sure if I was deserving of even being on this little planet we call Earth.
Then I started to meet people.
I became a small part of a team that was brimming with talented and passionate people. I’m not going to pretend that joining The Montclarion magically flipped a switch in my head that instantaneously “cured me” of the mental funk I was in, but it definitely helped. When I became the assistant to former Entertainment Editor Robert O’Connor, I felt that it was a real turning point in my life. I was officially part of something. It turns out that might’ve been what I had needed for so long.
AND I WROTE ABOUT IT @TheMontclarion – https://t.co/MVvhMZUh2n https://t.co/x0oNC0InKB
— Javier Herbert Reyes (@Javiipeno) December 8, 2017
I got to do some awesome work while I was here, too. My first article was a review on the video game “Cuphead,” and that was especially fun because I was able to honestly tell my mom that I was playing a video game for work-related reasons. I wrote about Montclair University Gamers, the on-campus student group dedicated to, well, video games.
.@sunahechoudhry : Hey I’m low on content can u write something for this week?
— Javier Herbert Reyes (@Javiipeno) September 14, 2018
Sports Editor Anthony Gabbianelli allowed me to rant about my disdain for the Warriors. Former Opinion Editor Sunah Choudhry somehow allowed me to write about “Mario Party.” Current Opinion Editor Rebecca Serviss, who is definitely thrilled by how long it has taken me to submit this goodbye piece, allowed me to write about what the Oscars could learn from The Video Game Awards. Entertainment Editor Thomas Neira let me write about Nintendo.
While I am certainly proud of all the work that I have accomplished, it means nothing compared to how proud I am that I got to meet such incredible people along the way. I mean that more than anything, and my only regret is that I didn’t get to spend more time with The Montclarion in my final semester. Hopefully, nobody takes that as a sign that I didn’t care, because it was the exact opposite. I can just be one of those seriously dumb kids who have trouble expressing how much they care about people sometimes, what can I say?
So to all the people at The Montclarion, all the people that are thinking of joining (you obviously should, duh), and to anyone who has even once enjoyed being in my company: I love all of you, 3000.
https://twitter.com/HaleyWells28/status/966505808887517184
