In the fall of 2013, there was one thing I knew I wanted to do when I got to Hofstra. I walked around the club fair looking for the school newspaper table, so I could get my name on that email list and launch my career. Three weeks later, I had a byline for an article about Fall Fest and I haven’t looked back since. I went from being a staff writer to a section editor and nothing has better taught me what it takes to be a journalist than The Chronicle.

We live in a time where the public has lost faith in the media. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “journalism is dead” over the last year, I probably wouldn’t have to find a job because I would be sitting on a pile of cash. I’ll admit that at times even I, a news junkie obsessed with seeing my name on a byline, questioned what the point was. How could I throw myself into a job that didn’t even seem to matter anymore?

But journalism does still matter, even when the media is nowhere near perfect. The term “fake news” has become a common phrase and trust is hard for everyone. That doesn’t mean we give up. The only thing that will change it is to work even harder to tell the truth.

In my time here I wrote more stories than I can remember, though I do know that at least three of them were about “Gilmore Girls.” I’ve learned that it’s almost better to watch somone else write a really great feature than it is to write it yourself (almost). I would not be the writer or the editor I am today if it wasn’t for The Chronicle. This is a different paper than it was four years ago in the best possible way. In pushing itself to be better it pushed me to be better, and for that I will always be grateful.

Thank you to Janet Lee for teaching me how to run the features section and for rejecting pun headlines that definitely shouldn’t have been in print (even though I still stand by “It’s Hammer Time” and I will never change my mind). Allison Eichler and Mack Caldwell deserve thanks for being amazing assistants – you’re going to make these four pages even better than they already are. To The Chronicle office, thank you for being a place I always knew I was welcome. And last but furthest from least, thank you to the editors – as Lizzie McGuire would reluctantly write in a middle school yearbook, “You rock! Don’t ever change!”

To my future self and anyone else who wants to go into the media: be relentless. Work as hard as you can. Journalism still matters.