The PawPrint goodbye

This is a rough draft of the letter I've written to be published in my final issue of The PawPrint, my high school newspaper. It will become a more collaborative effort with my fellow Co-Editor-in-Chief, but this is my original, initial work. As one of the biggest successes of my high school career, this newspaper obviously means a lot to me. So hopefully this piece will be somewhat enjoyable for outside observers :)

“THE PAPER IS HERE!” I squeal, prompted by a text message from a fellow staffer who has received the shipment of 800 full-color newspapers upstairs. As my teacher allows me to leave and bring some copies, voices erupt in pleas for their own copy and hands shoot up, attempting to grab my attention in hopes that they get an issue, too. The atmosphere in the room is in such a high state of ecstasy, it somehow rivals my own. And this newspaper is literally my pride and joy.

Needless to say, my heart skips a few beats when I see a student body as excited as I am for new issues of the newly-popular, newly-awesome PawPrint. It’s becoming a household brand at Durant, the school of its inception; the same campus, in fact where before we came to the helm, it lined trash cans and dirty floors as the literal scum of Durant High School.

But somehow, we infused within these 16-20 pages an unparalleled sense of relate-ability, of raw humor, of creative prowess, of innate coolness. And as we’ve grown as students and as human beings through these past four years, so has the PawPrint evolved with us, accumulating its own sense of style and maturity, and even its own fanbase. And now people tear copies up from our newsstands as if they can’t get enough. We stir controversy, and get Durant talking. The PawPrint’s final destination is more likely within the hands of an engaged reader than in a Hillsborough County Schools dump truck.

In the newsroom tucked behind the wooden door of Room 459, success is a tangible thing. Within the same pages you see every month in your classrooms and in the cafeteria are our dedication and hard work, quarrels and frustration, inside jokes and laughter, our passion and hearts. Each word, headline, photograph, caption, and even advertisement is the result of our incredible staff’s hard work. Nobody knows the sweet taste of this triumph better than us, the two girls whose names are now synonymous with “the newspaper,” or “PawPrint” across Durant -- the two ambitious girls who were once sophomores with a figurative defibrillator, breathing life into a scant black-and-white four pages with a creepy cartoon kitty (correction -- “Cougar”) on its front-page title header.

During the days of an apathetic editorial board and less-than-helpful adviser, we took charge. We taught ourselves foreign design concepts and programs. We demanded content from staffers. We sold advertisements and ran budgets. We did it all, all by ourselves.

In hindsight, it’s almost unrealistic how much our laborious efforts have paid off. And not only have we achieved the right to say we’re definitely “WINNING!” but we’ve also become like journalistic sisters. Together, we’ve dedicated our lives to this publication. Together, we reap the benefits and pride of this publication’s prosperity. And together, we’ll exit Room 459 with a sense of bittersweet accomplishment that we’re not sure we’re quite ready for right now.

Going off to college in Gainesville and Washington, D.C., respectively, are relatively close realities from our vantages right now, writing this on our MacBooks in a newsroom in which we’ve taken refuge the past three years of our lives. It’s frightening but electrifying in a way only other seniors in our position can understand.

Regardless, though, it’s the PawPrint that we have accepted as the collective hallmark of our high school careers. The PawPrint has taught us responsibility and enterprise, professionalism and initiative -- all attributes that all of Durant associates with us, and all the same attributes that will carry us into our respective futures. And while we bid adieu to our adviser Miss Shannon Tucker, our wonderful staff members and section editors, as well as an administration, faculty, and student body who have steadily believed in the PawPrint, we look back at the progress we together made possible. And we bittersweetly hoard our last PawPrint collaborative effort in this issue -- until we give our last papers away to all the classmates who beg for their own copies, with a fulfilled smile spreading across our faces.