As my three year term for Ewha Voice is soon to end, my mind is getting complicated. I think about the past experiences I had with Ewha Voice, how I will hand over my work to other reporters, and what I should do next once I am liberated from the pool of work Ewha Voice has given me. But all these different trains of thoughts have one common message: that it is time for an end and a new start – both for me and the newspaper.
First, for me. I have started working for Ewha Voice in my freshman year. Three years have passed since then. While it is unbelievable that I am already facing the end of junior year and ending my term as the editor-in-chief, it was not a short and breezy time. The time did not pass by in a blink of an eye. The three years I have spent with Ewha Voice was quite long and challenging. I had many difficult and frustrating moments, and I had to devote much of my time and effort to fulfill my responsibilities and commitments. But this also meant that I learned a lot, had lots of valuable experiences, grew as a person, and felt really proud in some situations. I also met many interesting people, from the reporters with whom I worked with to the interviewees I encountered.
At first, when I was a cub reporter, everything was so new and unfamiliar. I was so nervous and sometimes even scared when I had to call school officials to ask for information, go to interviews, or present my news item in regular meetings. Doing these unfamiliar tasks was indeed something out of my comfort zone, and I had to push myself and gather courage to venture uncharted waters in my position. I found myself doing things I never expected I would have done; interviewing the school’s honorary president, catching random people in the library to ask their opinions on renovation, approaching foreign exchange students to ask them to write an opinion piece for the paper, staying up until 3 a.m. to perfect my article.
But as time passed, these new adventures turned into a routine, a fixed schedule of daily life. Plus, as an editor-in-chief, I did not need to dive out into the field to get interviews. Looking back on my beginnings working with Ewha Voice, although I blush from some of the silly mistakes I had made then, I cannot help but miss the days I was more eager, less skilled and less accustomed to the routine. I have been doing the same thing, living the same routine for six semesters. I have learned so much from working for the paper and am immensely grateful for the experience. But it is time for me to move on and start a new adventure.
The same can be said for Ewha Voice itself. Not that it should stop publishing, but that it needs a new start. Publishing a newspaper every two weeks while the reporters all have to take classes and have other commitments is pretty challenging. So it is very easy to follow the past patterns; what used to be done. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to follow the precedent, but it can get old. So the newspaper needs a fresh start. The need for change is often raised within the organization during the semester, but it is difficult to figure out the exact changes to make and how – especially in the middle of a semester. So as new editors will take over the paper and all reporters will have new positions, discussions for innovative change can happen actively and the newspaper can start anew next year with new members.
The end of 2015 is followed by the start of a new year 2016. This would be the perfect time for myself, for Ewha Voice, and for just about anyone and any organization to reflect upon what is ending and look forward to what is coming up. We can all take this moment of end to recoup and start fresh.
So there it is, all things must come to an end.
저작권자 © Ewha Voice 무단전재 및 재배포 금지