SIN has been a part of my life since the year of 2017; I can personally thank my previous English lecturer, Dermot Burns, for introducing me to the college newspaper. A contributor I became, falling in love with the paper straightaway. A love at first writing type romance and what writer wouldn’t love to become a sinner.
After my drop out from college in early 2019, I was heartbroken because of the financial pressure and one of my subjects wasn’t working in my favour, the whole process led me to leaving. That feeling of pain reached to the fact I thought I would be unable to write for the paper; my understanding was you had to be a student to be a contributor.
My editor, at the time, Aine Kenny sent me a heartfelt message expressing her sympathy for my departure, but that she still wanted me to write for SIN. “At the end of the day, I have the final say of what goes in the paper, and I say that we need you” were her words at the conclusion of the message, her words brought tears and a new sense of confidence that I had only just lost while receiving an official letter to state I was no longer a student anymore.
I continued writing for them, year after year. Although I was a full-time worker, I dedicated the hours before and after work to getting articles done. Perhaps there were times I got too ahead of myself and took on too many articles, but looking back, I don’t regret it. Those times became a challenge, to push myself to become a better writer and for them I’m grateful.
It was only this year, did my editor, Valerie McHugh, gave me the opportunity to be a sub-editor because of my dedication to the newspaper. There was zero hesitation, the answer being a yes. It was a strange alteration for me to be coming up with future article ideas instead of being the one to take them; there was a small part of me that was anxious to pitch my first set of feature ideas for issue one at the start of the semester; terrified that the contributors and fellow sub-editors wouldn’t find my ideas interesting or worth-while.
My anxiety dissipated when contributors and sub-editors openly expressed their interest in the ideas; smiles were shared and discussions were had in regards to e-mails and word count of the articles and I knew then that I had nothing to be scared of.
It has been a pleasure and a great honour to be a part of such a hard-working, driven and talented team of writers and photographers. Meeting them created a bond and working with them created phenomenal content that’ll last until SIN is in its futuristic years like it is today.
Being a features editor has been one of the best experiences I’ve encountered on my journey through the writing world and I hope to use this gained experience and knowledge for my career in writing that lays ahead of me like an open page. The best feature article deserves to be written about the SIN team itself because they are the people who make things worth reading.
