It may seem counterintuitive to introduce myself in a goodbye, but bear with me.
Hi, my name is Hannah, I’m 21 years old at the time of writing this, I love horror movies, the Muppets, Lorde, and I’m about to graduate with a BFA in Visual Communications Design. I’ve also been working behind the scenes at The Montclarion for about a year.
I’ve moved from illustrator, to production assistant, to horoscope writer (which I am wildly unqualified for), to production editor, to creative director (which I will admit was a self driven title change); week to week I complied, organized, distributed, and was generally responsible for making everything you saw (hopefully) every Thursday morning look good enough to take home with you.
To be completely honest, I joined the paper on a whim. I had done (very, very bad) illustrations freshman year for the opinion section, but refused to read the emails about how to become involved past that because they were just so so long. Until about two years later, when I saw a post on Instagram about the production editor position. I didn’t particularly know what that was, but I saw the words “Adobe InDesign” and “paid” and I figured I could handle it.
One email and an extremely awkward Zoom interview later, I was trying to navigate through a building I had never been in, to find a small room tucked away on the second floor.
I remember being so incredibly nervous to knock on the door, only equipped with my laptop and a rice krispy treat adorned with the words “good luck!” from my roommate Anna.
From the start, everyone was so kind, despite how terrified I was to be sitting in a room of people I had never met. The first thing I did was help Jenna figure out why her guides wouldn’t show up in InDesign, which was apparently a semester-long problem and was slightly impressive because most of her text was really well aligned without being able to see anything.
I remember sitting there one of the first few weeks, helping my now good friend Sam Bailey with part of her layout, still super nervous to mess something up. I don’t remember what I had changed, but I do remember her looking at the other Sam, our editor-in-chief at the time, saying how good her layout looked and how I should be allowed to change anything I wanted.
I took that very much to heart (if you didn’t notice from our complete overhaul of our previous branding) but it felt right, like I belonged here at the paper.
I haven’t really been emotional about this whole leaving thing, it just hasn’t really felt real yet — but I think it might just be because I’m not worried about the future of The Montclarion.
During my time as the production editor/creative director, I greeted Ed the printing press guy the same way my predecessor, Ian, did. I go through layouts the same way they did, I even still use their Wordle starting word (irate) each morning.
My point is; even though change seems scary, there’s pieces of the past in everything. Except our logo. There’s nothing left of that old ugly thing anywhere.
Anyways, thank you to Ian and Sam, for your unwavering encouragement of my weird ideas, and for being the best mentors and friends anyone could ever hope to have.
To Alex and Katie, for constantly supporting me and whatever food suggestion I tried to talk Emma into each Wednesday.
To Avery, for befriending me immediately and helping me write prophetic horoscopes every week.
To my assistant Nicky, my fellow whatever in the universe.
And to my best friend and (now former) boss, Emma Caughlan, for teaching me what AP style is, among other things.
Good luck, see you later, don’t change my logo. <3
