My Editorial Sounded More like a High School Term Paper
My Editorial Sounded More like a High School Term Paper
I loved high school. It was probably the best part of my young adult life. I had lots of friends and really was pretty popular. I loved when people said hello to me by name. I loved the excitement. Hanging out with friends, meeting new people and always having something to do. My senior year in high school was the best. I was given the position of editor of the school paper. I was beyond excited about it. I knew it would be a great opportunity for me. I could see my creative juices flowing now. That was until my first editorial turned into a high school term paper.
The first day I walked into the news paper room as the editor I could feel the respect brewing. I called my first meeting to order wrote all the potential articles on the white board. I quickly gave out assignments to the eager freshman and the not so forthcoming juniors. I talked to the graphics artist about the new layout I envisioned started making phone calls to fill ad space. I did everything I thought an editor should be doing. Then realized I was not much of an editor. I was horrible at editing my own term papers let alone a whole newspaper. I knew this would be a problem.
The evening I got to work writing my editorial. I let my ideas flow. I introduced myself as the new editor. I talked about how much I loved going to school here. How the teachers were great and that I would definitely miss the school when I was went off to college the following year. When I was done it looked more like a high school term paper. It was long, at least five pages. I guess I really thought what I had to say was important. I just couldn’t edit myself.
Not only could I not edit myself I was really starting to think I was in over my head. As I was handed stacks for articles daily I became very overwhelmed with the editing processes. I would try to edit an article and when I was done I would pass it along to the junior editor who was getting frustrated with having to catch all my mistakes. She asked me if I had ever edited a high school term paper in our writing class I told her yes but editing those were completely different than editing an article.
That afternoon I decided if I wanted to keep my job I would have to learn how to edit an article and not just a high school term paper. I went to the library and did some key analysis research on editing. It was harder than you would think. There were so many rules to follow. Most people make everyday mistakes when writing. I even found a really good research paper on how to write a great high school term paper.
The term paper had three main points when writing a term paper. The first was keep it simple. Pick a broad topic that you can find many sources on. The second, if you can pick how you want to site sources site APA is it the easiest and most effective. And third, it’s a high school term paper, not college odds are it doesn’t have to be perfect and you can only get better from here. I did find a lot of solace in the last statement. I was only a senior. I really only ever wrote high school term papers. I couldn’t expect my first newspaper publication to be perfect just descent.
Friday morning I was looking forward to seeing my first printed publication. As far as my editorial went I was really excited to see my high school term paper in print. I was unable to shorten the length of it and I wouldn’t let my junior editor touch a word. I got lots of comments on my first published paper. I also received many comments on my editorial. Not many of them were good which led me to believe I probably wouldn’t be editor much longer
