One boy, ten girls — that was the ratio of our staff my entire first year working on the newspaper.
I’ve spent two years on staff, two completely different years; junior year and half of my senior year, I was the only guy on the staff.
For a while, this made me really uncomfortable and was extremely awkward for me, and I probably made everyone else feel the same.
Junior year, I came into class and sat on a side of the room by myself and went pretty much every day without saying a word to anyone in the class besides Mrs. McCambridge.
I enjoyed doing the work but I was always the first person out of the room when the bell rang and would never ask for help from anybody.
I had to leave early from class one day for a track meet, and I accidentally exited my page without saving it.
A normal person would probably ask someone else to help them, but not awkward junior-year me.
I decided to remake everything I had worked all class on in five minutes and not tell anybody about it at all. Unsurprisingly, it turned out pretty poorly.
Going into senior year, I remember telling someone that I had three AP classes first semester, but newspaper was the class I was looking forward to the least.
Thankfully, I realized that everyone else on staff was just as awkward as I am, “aco taco” as Isabel Copeland would say, and I became much less quiet and way more willing to ask for help and give help to the rest of the staff.
I became a lot more comfortable with everyone and actually came to class and got to know the girls on staff.
When Caleb Oblepias and Kellan O’Connell joined the staff for second semester, it wasn’t even that big of a deal because it didn’t feel weird to me anymore being the only guy in the room.
Last year, the girls on staff were just classmates who I saw every other day, but now that I am graduating soon I think I can say that everyone on staff has become a friend to me.