1. When you signed up to your student paper, you had no idea what you were getting yourself into.
2. You couldn't have anticipated how many evenings you'd spend writing breaking news.
3. How many hours you'd spend sitting through student union meetings.
4. Or quite how long it'd take you to understand Photoshop and InDesign.
5. You still remember how you felt when you got your first byline.
6. It was probably for a story you didn't want your mum to see.
7. And seeing your paper come back from the printer for the first time was an unbeatable feeling.
8. However stressful distribution day may have been.
9. Of course, you kept one of every copy you were in. Just in case.
10. Selling a story to the nationals was a huge deal.
11. That's why it was very important not to make up quotes.
12. Which you did more often than you'd care to admit.
13. Your editorial meetings were mostly about getting drunk.
14. And coming up with puns. You became very good at puns.
15. Which is part of the reason you enjoyed April Fools' Day so much.
16. These books taught you everything you knew.
17. But they didn't teach you to press "record" on a Dictaphone. Which you definitely forgot to do at least once.
18. They also didn't teach you how to put together an entire section at the last minute when a section editor forgot to show up.
19. Of course, you were prone to the occasional lapse of judgment.
20. Which meant you ended up getting into trouble with your university a fair few times.
21. And uni officials refused to speak to you.
22. You were unreasonably competitive with your rival student papers.
23. And spotting typos in their work gave you a special sense of pride.
24. Of course, you lost your sense of humour when they spotted out typos in your work.
25. You spent so much time on your paper that you basically forgot about your degree.
26. And because you spent so long writing snappy sentences, you definitely forgot how to write essays.
27. But seeing other people around campus reading your stories more than made up for it.
28. And when strangers recognised you from your headshot, you felt pretty famous.
29. But even you got starstruck when a genuine celebrity came to your university town and you got to interview them.
30. Of course, the excitement wore off when you had to transcribe the interview and hear your own voice.
31. Your other friends hated you for clogging up their Facebook newsfeeds with university news.
32. And the one columnist you hired to get hate readers wasn't keen on you either.
33. But most importantly, because you spent so much time with your editorial team...
34. ... you know they'll be friends for life.
