Coming into the University of Connecticut, I didn’t expect the school newspaper to be one of the few constants in my college life. A freshman year of fully online classes didn’t help with getting involved on campus, so in my sophomore year, I applied to be a digital producer for The Daily Campus in search of an on-campus job. Little did I know that this random building behind Moe’s with the sketchy staircase would become such a big part of these past three years.
During my first few months of working as a digital producer, I didn’t actually realize we were a newspaper organization. I know it sounds silly after finishing my senior year working as an associate managing editor, but I genuinely didn’t make the connection that the articles I was uploading were also being printed in a physical paper. As a shy, self-conscious underclassman, I just kept to myself and uploaded without speaking to many people at production. To those who worked with me during that time, you probably don’t remember since I literally didn’t open my mouth unless it was for the production icebreaker.
When I finally put the pieces together that I was working for the school newspaper — don’t ask me how long that took, I couldn’t tell you — I applied for a designer position my junior year. I wanted to get more involved with the DC and always had a passion for graphic design. Plus, I was already there twice a week and thought, “What’s one more day going to do?” Looking back at the mock design I created for my designer application, I want to say thank you to Sam and Janella, the managing editors at the time, for hiring me. That design honestly looked like a hot mess, but I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity since my time as a designer was so enjoyable.
The first shift I worked in fall 2022, I accidentally got assigned as the Life designer. With Life section designs, you have a lot of creative freedom to play with various fonts, colors and shapes. As someone who had never touched Adobe InDesign prior to that day, I was intimidated and had no creative gears turning in my head. Luckily, Janella, the associate managing editor for Thursday production, gave me tips and tricks to fill space on the page. After that, I got switched to design for news for the rest of the fall semester and was able to learn InDesign without feeling the pressure of creating fancy Life designs.
In the spring of 2023, I got assigned as the Life designer again, this time not by mistake. After a semester of designing the News section and gaining confidence with my InDesign skills, I was no longer intimidated, but rather excited, to have so much creative freedom. Every week, I would come into production with new ideas of how to design my pages.
This was also around the time I started talking more at production and generally just having more fun there. I was at the DC three nights a week, often past midnight, and didn’t care about getting back to my dorm late. When I first joined, production was explained to me as more like a club than a job, and I couldn’t agree more. So, if you’re reading this and thinking about applying to be a part of DC production, do it! I met one of my closest friends, Van, at production my junior year and we’ve been inseparable since. Joining production was one of the best experiences I had at UConn and I don’t regret it for a second.
I had the pleasure to work as one of the associate managing editors this year, alongside Raquel and Emily, and it’s been such a wonderful opportunity. Just working as a digital producer or designer, you don’t realize how much behind the scenes work goes into getting an article in the paper or online. It’s kind of funny this will be my first and last article I write for the DC, but I’m proud of all I’ve done here. The DC helped me gain confidence and was a place I could always go to escape all other things in college. I’m genuinely going to miss working late hours in this small building, but I know the incoming generation will do great things next year. Thank you to everyone I’ve worked with this year and good luck to everyone in the upcoming year! Lastly, congratulations to the class of 2024! It’s been a crazy four years, but we did it.