While I was in high school, and the recent grads would invade my classrooms and loiter in the hallways, my initial thoughts were, "that shall not be me next year." I honestly did not understand the appeal of visiting your old high school, I mean it's only been what, six, seven months? So, as this is the first extended period I am home I silently resolved to not visit Cranbrook or Kingswood. My mother was not pleased with this decision.
Then I started thinking about it and I saw on one of my many social networking sites (this time fb) a fellow classmate's thoughts on visiting Cranbrook. As he quite logically stated, it's highly unlikely that you'll want to visit Cranbrook any other year. This made tons of sense to me. Chris was always so logical in his rationale—I should make an effort to see him once in a while, afterall he's only 104 blocks away!
I figured the best way to see newspaper people would be to go to an actual meeting. Luckily, there was a meeting last night and Amanda (the new me) even brought food! I trained her so well. Anyway, I haven't not run the newspaper meetings since...the end of junior year—I had NO idea they were that boring. ugh. I nearly died of boredom and almost left like, three times. But I really wanted to stay and talk to Watson.
It was quite interesting, merely observing the many personalities crammed into Watson's rather small classroom, all there in the name of high school journalism.
I parked my car in the administrator's parking lot, knowing that the side door would be unlocked. I opened the door, and all of a sudden the memories came flooding back: the countless late nights in the Crane room (also known as the basement of the boys' dorms), attempting to run the meetings without yelling/frightening too many underclassmen, mentoring younger writers, layout/InDesign (my favorite part of newspaper!), creepily standing to the side and taking a billion pics of every single Upper School event and the list goes on and on.
If you haven't figured out by now, newspaper was my life in high school, especially senior year. Back to my story. I was actually nervous to go into the meeting, but those nerves faded away once I saw Watson and dear Mr. Briggeman. Even though I had been on campus all week long, in that moment I truly felt as though I had returned. The Crane was my entire being—sad but very, very true. But once again, I digress.
As I was saying, at the meeting there were a few fresh faces and personalities and the ever present abundance of tension between the "senior editors." sidenote: I say "senior editors" because obviously I was THE editor, but the Crane has drastically changed in the past four years and, inevitably, in Watson's old age (though you will always strike fear into my heart watson, heh). Anyway, seniors use to strike fear into an underclassmen's tiny heart—I know the class of '06 did that to me! But I really noticed last year, underclassmen are sassy and do not understand their place in the Crane hierarchy and the larger, upper school hierarchy.
Underclassmen don't realize that they need to pay their dues and work their way up the ladder. You don't think I gave up my seat, answered the phones, cleaned the disgusting Crane room, went on paper runs, and fact checked pages and pages of names? I definitely payed my dues as an underclassmen and I deserved every ounce of respect that I got once I was a senior and managing editor.
that was unnecessarily length and long-winded. As much as I've griped about the Crane in the past, I will say, with the utmost of confidence, I had several defining moments involving the Crane—good and bad. I would not be even half the person I am today had I not signed up at club fair, freshman year. When you dedicate so much of yourself to something, as I did with the Crane, it really is a labor of love.
