I can vividly remember my first pitch meeting as a news reporter for The Daily Iowan the Sunday before my first day of college. I remember being told that the DI is a learning lab, a place where you’re able to be a real journalist in a controlled environment. I was completely intimidated by working at a place where you’re thrown into the water and you either sink or swim. With no prior journalistic experience and imposter syndrome through the roof, I thought I’d sink.

I didn’t. Four years later, I owe my many happy memories in the newsroom, over 300 bylines, and journalistic growth to that environment and the people who have shaped me since that first day.

The DI immediately gave me a place on campus that pushed me out of my comfort zone more than going to college already would. My first editors, Eleanor Hildebrandt and Sabine Martin, not only trusted me with the higher education beat but also encouraged my love for it. Their guidance and drive gave me the confidence to hold my head high and be unafraid of speaking to anyone on campus if it meant getting a story and telling the truth, and I still model myself after them.

I’ve been hooked since then. The DI taught me the power that words have in shaping the view people have of the world. Journalists are responsible for sharing people’s stories and creating change, no matter the method or the seriousness of the topic. The fact that I was given the chance to do that before I had stepped foot on the University of Iowa campus and repeatedly for the next four years is a gift that I will cherish and pay forward forever.

I am grateful I have had the opportunity to write about everything from protests on campus to diversity being challenged nationally to features about inspiring Kid Captains and paintings on the Pentacrest. To anyone who has given me an interview, thank you. It has been the honor of my life to tell your stories — the people who make Iowa City the distinct place it is. I have learned as much about journalism from them as I have in the newsroom.

Beyond journalistic experiences, the DI has given me wonderful friends whom I look up to and admire, admittedly too many to name in a column that I am bound to go over word count in. However, Maddie, Marandah, and Jami have been my confidants and best friends since our first year at the UI. I am not only a better journalist because they are in my life. I’m a better person.

I would not have been able to achieve half the things I did if it weren’t for my support system outside the DI, including my loved ones and friends from the flower who have listened to me be the bearer of all types of news over the last four years. Thank you especially to my parents and sister for always being my biggest cheerleaders. My parents have saved a copy of every story I’ve had in print in a filing cabinet in my childhood room, and I treasure that collection more than you know.

I have loved enriching myself in Iowa City’s stories, and I know I will carry each of them with me following my graduation from the UI. However, when it comes to my time at Iowa, I know the stories I will tell about my college days will center around The Daily Iowan and all the wonderful memories it has given me.