I first heard about The Tower in my eighth-grade broadcast journalism class. A student came in to tell us about the organization and how it was a pillar to the Grosse Pointe community, encouraging us young students to get involved and join in on this offer. From that day forward, I was intrigued, but hesitant to join immediately.

Walking into the halls of South for the first time, I noticed copies of broadsheets laying out from classroom to classroom, daring me to take a look. I found myself exploring the pages whenever I got a chance to grab one for myself, examining the pretty colors and hard-hitting story ideas from marijuana to high school hookup culture. So, to truly test out the power behind the Tower, I signed myself up.

In order to actually write for The Tower, I had to take honors journalism first. Looking at and reading a paper is one thing, but to actually produce content and execute design is a much greater job. It was like a boot camp– an intense year of writing all sorts of stories from news articles to editorials, to creating multimedia packages and even producing my own website. By the end of the class, the thought of another year full of toil and moil over stories and pages was intimidating, to say the least.

My poor expectations were definitely challenged by what I experienced the following two years on staff. Rather than having my fingers develop acute arthritis, I found myself thriving among relaxed staffers who wrote about things they were genuinely interested in, and in return, I was able to reap the benefits of being in an encouraging environment. My own personal work grew better and better with the help of Edge and all of leadership.

So, now that we have all the basic fluff laid out, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of what I really thought about my years on staff.

DEADLINE
Overall, deadlines were exceptional. Pre-COVID, deadline was a nice time to productively work alongside fellow friends and staffers while munching away on some lovely snacks and dinners. There were some late nights, though, where I truly just wanted to go home and do homework and study for a test the next day.

GRADING
Tower grading will be in your favor if you put in fair and quality work each week. With this in mind, every quarter I dreaded selling ads. Ads all around, while necessary to the publication, were the biggest pain. Running around to business after business begging for them to consider placing an ad was almost as terrible as trying to place them on a page each week. No shade to Edge, but ad selling would be much more efficient and motivate more people to genuinely try to sell them if they were extra credit.

FIELD TRIPS/MIPA
One of the greatest feelings as a Tower staffer was waking up for school in anticipation of hopping onto a bus to head to East Lansing for a MIPA conference. While I was only able to attend one conference, dressing up as Tinker v. Des Moines with a fellow staffer and close friend Maddie Weekley while attending lectures was unforgettable.

The Tower was altogether a top-tier experience. For someone who entered high school with the expectation of doing choir for all four years, it was a pleasant surprise to leave as a trained student journalist.