Unlike several of my fellow Editorial Board members, I didn’t take The Pitch in freshman year. At that point, journalism was an interest but not yet a passion, and it took me until junior year to become a fully-fledged member of WJ’s famed student newspaper. The choice to do so, I can say with confidence, was one of the best I’ve ever made. The people I’ve met have become some of my closest friends, whose company I cherish and whom I will miss bitterly as we go our separate ways. The articles I’ve written and photos I’ve taken have made clear to me just how much I love this field, and motivated me to commit to studying the damn thing for the next four years. The happiness, the anger, the worry, the pride; the Pitch may be just one chapter of the novella that is high school, but one that I know I will fondly remember for as long as I live.
As a whole, I am nearly unrecognizable from my August 2021, fresh from COVID-19 self. Physically, mentally, emotionally, I have been changed in pretty much every regard I can think of, and I’m delighted that said change has been a net positive. Have there been stumbling blocks? Of course. No good story is a linear trend of constant improvement: I’ve cried, reached levels of stress I wasn’t aware existed and I’ve had plenty of times when I was definitely not a fan of the whole high school thing. But some of that crying has been from laughing too hard, I’ve gotten an awful lot better at handling the aforementioned stress and I’ve had many, many times when I was most absolutely, indisputably a fan of the whole high school thing.
Sometimes, we get too caught up in what we’re doing. What activities we’re in, what APs we’re taking, what test we have to study for next. But as my friend and Dictator-in-Chief Seyun Park once said, it’s not so much what we do as it is who we do it with. In this case, I could not have asked for a better cast of characters to go through four years of my life with. I am eternally grateful to everyone who I’ve had the honor and pleasure of befriending at WJ, but if I tried to thank you all, this reflection would take up every page of the issue.
If I could, I would spin tales of Mock Trial glory alongside Elli, Max and Vijay; I would explain how without Rhea, Josh and Seyun, The Pitch would have been a mere shadow of the fantastic institution that it has been for me; I would describe how I will never be able to thank Zaine, Arnoldo and Alex enough for keeping me alive through the trenches of busywork; and I would most definitely have to acknowledge the teachers that have played a major role in making my experience so amazing, including, but certainly not limited to, Simmons, Borrelli and Willard. But, I want to make sure that other people can fit their reflections, too, and so I’ll stick with just a paragraph.
Walter Johnson isn’t perfect, which is fantastic because if it was, The Pitch would have very little to report on. But be that as it may, my time at WJ has been a period of growth. It took years and required me to confront who I was and who I wanted to be, but it happened. I chose to put down the controller and give martial arts a try. I chose to go to a battery of club interest meetings instead of being content with the friends I had. I chose to stop thinking I could always do it better myself and start trusting and helping those alongside me. Together, these choices have allowed me to evolve into someone I’m proud to be. Do I still have plenty of growing to do? Most definitely. But I’ve come a long way, and while it’s mixed up with all the excitement and fear, above all else I am grateful. If this was an AP Lit book, I’d say that Part 1 is just about finished. I, for one, am pretty excited for Part 2.
