More than just writing skills and AP style, the three years I have spent working for Hilltop Views the newspaper have taught me courage, responsibility and perseverance—priceless lessons that will help me more after graduation than anything else.

I have been faced with some incredibly difficult conversations that I never could have survived before I took this job. I was responsible for ensuring that 24 issues of the newspaper were published over the past two semesters and I am proud to say that I—and my staff—succeeded. And I have learned to stick with a commitment until the very end even though there are so many times when I really, really wanted to just give up.

My experience with Hilltop Views was such a joyful, frustrating, terrifying and confusing one and it’s impossible to really explain it. Although this job has taken so much from me—namely my sanity and Monday nights—it has given me much more, like friends and memories.

I want to say thank you to Jena Heath for helping me survive an impossible year, to Lisa Rodriguez for always staying to the end of production nights with me, to Jenna Jaco for providing endless laughs primarily via headline writing (we’ve been in this together since the beginning and I’m so thankful for that), to Hannah Thornby for being a reliable constant in my hectic life and to the rest of the staff for sticking in there when things got rough and not revolting against me. I really appreciate it.