When I first came onto The Collegian writing staff around the middle of the 2019 spring semester, I was excited and a nervous wreck. I did not feel like the best person for the position. My writing was not where I wanted it to be. My time management skills were still in the developmental stages. And the thought of interviewing strangers made me sick.

The newspaper staff had just lost many of its members that semester, and so they definitely needed new staff members, emailing several of those students who were doing well in Principles of Journalism. 

Hoping I would learn something from the experience, but still having a foreboding feeling that my pride was about to have major beat down, I signed up. I could not be more thankful that I made that decision.

BJU’s newspaper has allowed me to improve my journalism skills by requiring me to research topics, interview people and write articles every week. I was humbled by the Christlike spirit of the people I had the honor of interviewing for The Collegian.

The Collegian allowed me to practice what I had been learning in the classroom.  But there were even more valuable things I have taken away from my experience on the newspaper staff. 

Those things were the relationships I got the chance to build. The editing staff, Seth Johnson and Christina Laird, is ever-patient and helpful, with a work ethic that will inspire me long after I graduate from BJU. My fellow writers have been a comfort in times of heavy article revisions and have made me laugh at some of the hard times in the semester.

In high school, I could never had seen myself here, writing a column for the University’s newspaper, but as the LORD said in Isaiah 55:9, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Though I know that this is only one step that God has for me on my journey, it makes me excited to see what else God has in store in the future.