I grew up thinking that in order to be a journalist, I needed to have my name attached to hundreds of articles.

That’s why most people join The Chronicle in the first place, right? To get their work published week after week online and in print. Some use it to get ahead in class, others use it to build a portfolio and then there’s the rare few who join to tell stories. I’m proud to say I’m one of the few, as are the members that make up The Chronicle’s editorial board – past, present and future.

It’s weird to think that the whole reason I’m a journalist today is because I decided it would be fun to write about sports for two weeks in the middle of the summer, but every day I thank my middle school self for doing so. I experienced my first taste of journalism at a camp called Write on Sports. The camp’s mission was, and is, to inspire students to write by writing about something they’re passionate about: sports. TL;DR: I was inspired.

I wrote a feature story that I planned, researched, drafted and revised, wrote “spot stories,” that I can only now describe as game recaps, complete with ledes, deks and quotes. I made a video arguing whether or not dance was a sport and forced my friend to be “Chad the Football Player,” who was very against dance in the world of sports for balance’s sake.

Guest athletes and journalists took time out of their days to hold mock interviews, sharing their stories and crafts with middle schoolers and allowing students to ask questions. I was thrown into my first media scrum the second day of camp, even though I didn’t know what it was then. I was terrified of approaching strangers, especially ones who seemed so important, but 13-year-old me found the courage to ask the questions I wanted answers to every single time – and I loved it.

Only now do I realize how privileged I was to interview and speak with the likes of NBC Sports’ Peter King, Sports Illustrated’s Jenny Vrentas and then-MLB.com’s Lindsay Berra – journalists I look up to now – at such a young age. For them, being a journalist was about more than a byline, and it showed in their willingness to give back to the community and inspire the kids who might take their jobs one day.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college, The Chronicle comes into my life. I joined the copy section, mostly so that I didn’t have to talk to people. Grammar seemed like the safest way to get involved until I managed to interview someone, go to a game or find a hot take. (I firmly believe that The Chronicle would fall apart without the copy section, and that it’s the furthest thing from safe because correct grammar is hardcore, but freshman year me didn’t know any better.)

Four years later, the Oxford comma is my mortal enemy and I think I’ve written two articles for the paper, not including the recipes in my @GabGrabsGrub column. For a long time, I was worried that I was a bad journalist for not reporting and writing articles.

Yet, in the time I spent not writing, I edited hundreds of articles and sharpened my AP style and grammar knowledge; engineered, produced and reported for New York Islanders broadcasts; interned with the NBC News Social Media team for two semesters during a period of time that will surely go down in history and took on various leadership positions in a number of organizations, all while somehow finding time to do schoolwork.
I’ve done all of the things that I did in middle school at a two-week summer camp but on a bigger scale, and I’m a better journalist for it. Over time, I’ve learned that journalism is about more than getting bylines; it’s about finding ways to creatively tell and contribute to the stories that matter, regardless of the medium.

For me, there was never some big moment or revelation where I knew I had to become a journalist. I just never thought of being anything else. And it’s the small moments – the physical pain I experience when commas are outside of quotation marks, the nerves I get before engineering a New York Islanders game broadcast, the thrill (and fear) of sending a tweet from NBC News’ Twitter account to over 8.4 million followers – that confirm I’m where I belong.  

After all, as a middle schooler, when you write a game recap from the perspective of a literal baseball while wearing a shirt that says, “One in a Minion,” with blue plaid Bermuda shorts and people still compliment you and your writing, it’s pretty much meant to be.

And for me, The Chronicle was meant to be. I never thought of doing anything outside of the paper, but I was fortunate enough to have the support to be able to. This newspaper has been, and always will be, more than just a byline; it’s home.

Photo Courtesy of Gab Varano