It took me three and a half years to build up the courage to step foot in the Alligator’s old, sometimes smelly, but overall homey newsroom.
I had been there three or four times before, but for no more than 10 or 15 minutes. And I always left with nothing more than a “Contributing Writer” title.
Until finally, a few days before the last semester of my senior year, I put my irrational fears aside and decided to give it a shot. My byline was upgraded to “Staff Writer,” and with that I began one of hardest, yet most rewarding, semesters of my college career.
Let me tell you why.
When I switched my major to journalism my sophomore year, I didn’t know anyone in the J-School, and all I knew about the Alligator was that it was this hip little newspaper run by students.
“But it’s cliquey,” I used to hear students say.
I would secretly stare at them in class — the Alligator writers and editors. They sat together in the J-School’s large auditorium classes like Applied Fact Finding or Law of Mass Communications. They looked like journalists, with their cool bags, the girls in patterned dresses or hip, earthy-colored pants and vintage button-downs.
At least I had the thick-rimmed, square-glasses thing going for me.
So, I kept to myself. I was intimidated. Honestly, I was afraid of them. Like, what did I know about journalism? I failed all my AP Style reporting quizzes; I went out too much; and I’ve had, like, one internship.
And, jeez, they put out an entire newspaper five days a week.
“Open house this Friday!” my professors would tell me.
Was I ready to step foot in the largest student-run newspaper in the country?
No. The thought of walking into the newsroom and facing all those journo-gurus made my hands sweat and my stomach churn.
Three years later, I find myself writing this column to tell you to look your fears in the face, tell them to shove it and embrace the unfamiliar.
Ignore those nagging hesitations and irrational assumptions.
As soon as I stepped foot in the newsroom, I was welcomed into the Alligator family. They made me feel like I was a crucial piece in the newsroom right off the bat. They made me feel like I belonged.
That, and they fed me, a lot. After so many staff-bonding potlucks, I not only made new friends, but also gained my senior 15.
The thing is, the more I worked there, the more time I wanted to spend in that newsroom.
All the story ideas I hadn’t found time to work on came alive in that newsroom — a small space jam-packed with computers and the hilarious photos pinned all over the walls, where unidentifiable cords hang from the ceiling, where at any point a crisis would send someone running through the office, where your Facebook could be hacked several times a day, where laughter was probably the single most-heard sound and where incredibly motivated, fun and like-minded journalists come together to put out a paper five damn days a week.
It wasn’t easy. There were deadlines missed and there were mistakes made. But most importantly, there were lessons learned and together we made an impact on our community.
I want to give a special thank you to my editor and the rest of the staff, for extending the role of co-worker to friend, for always picking up my frantic phone calls, for never making me feel incompetent after a mistake was made, for assuring me that I’ll get a job even though I feel it’s unlikely, for feeding me the best homemade baked goods I’ve ever had, for showing me that it’s never too early to start following your dreams and for making me 100 percent sure that this is exactly what I want to do.
My only regret? Not joining sooner.
Carla Vianna is a graduating UF journalism senior. She is a staff writer at the Alligator.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 4/22/2015]
