It’s hard to distill just how life-changing the Alligator has been these past two years.
I joined the staff at a weird point in my college life — all my friends were from high school, I stayed in my dorm all day and was generally in a slump.
The Alligator, from the outside, looks a little bit like that. The paper no longer prints every day, and its office is so scary it's a staff cliche to describe it as “dusty and old.”
If you actually get inside, however, the building transforms into a beacon of life. You’re surrounded by a staff of 70-something hilarious, impressive peers. There’s this palpable camaraderie, this joy that infects everyone in that newsroom no matter how stressful the story they’re breaking is.
I’ve been lucky enough to intern at a few spots, but I can safely say that nowhere trains professional journalists quite like the Alligator.
As a student publication, the Alligator is the best out there. It’s one of very few in the United States with a dedicated Spanish-speaking section, it regularly places for awards and beats major outlets like the Chronicle of Higher Education or POLITICO to higher education stories.
It's rigorous, no matter what your skill level is. Staff members are immediately thrust into a real newsroom setting; my first day on staff was spent in a stranger’s car speeding to help with election coverage.
You’re sometimes assigned multiple stories a week, are expected to cover breaking news on a moment’s notice and will be passed through half a dozen editors and copy staff before anything you write gets published. It's this relentless pursuit of quality that transforms its staff from college students to proper journalists.
I truly believe there is no better institution at UF to learn reporting than right here.
However, the Alligator also offers something much more important than a bafflingly low paycheck, a line on a resume or an opportunity to impress internship coordinators with quality clips. The Alligator has provided me with some of the most valuable, rewarding relationships of my life.
From one of my first weeks on staff, the ridiculously talented Siena Duncan made a point of bringing me alongside the university desk as an “honorary member” — that silly interaction marked the beginning of one of the closest bonds of my life.
She has been such a role model and inspirational figure professionally and personally, and I cannot thank her enough for that. You have fundamentally impacted me for the better.
Talented editors like Lucy Lannigan stuck through my embarrassing, hard-to-follow copy, training me as a writer and reporter.
As I grew into leadership roles, I got the pleasure of navigating some of my most difficult semesters with Jiselle Lee and Claire Grunewald, who for a full summer were the only reason I came back to the paper at all.
Most recently, as editor-in-chief, I’ve had the honor to lead the paper alongside Valentina Sandoval and Diego Perdomo. They were my rock throughout this semester, I know they’ll be successful wherever life takes them and I cannot thank them enough for their incredible work and friendship these past few months.
Picturing my life without the Alligator is scary. It’s been an integral part of my college identity for about two years, and entering my last year without it makes me uneasy.
The paper is like a summer camp. You come to the Alligator, get to grow and have fun from it and then it’s time for you to leave. All you can hope to do is leave it in a little better shape than when you left it.
If you’re considering a future in journalism at all, apply to the Alligator. Applications opened Aug. 3, and there’s a myriad of ways to get involved beyond traditional reporting: writing opinion columns, designing graphics, running our social media or taking photos are just some of the many ways you can get involved here.
The Alligator shaped me for the better. If you take a chance on it, it’ll do the same for you.
Aidan Bush was the Summer 2024 Editor-in-Chief at the Alligator.
Aidan Bush is a fourth-year journalism major and the Summer 2024 Editor-in-Chief of The Alligator. In his free time, he likes to listen to music and go kayaking.
