Just an editor, not yet a chief.

 
From the small farm town of Salinas to the bustling streets of Hayward, my life before coming to California State University, East Bay had been anything but interesting. Like most high school students, my aspirations were non-existent.
I didn’t care about classes, higher education, or what my career would be after I graduated. I did care about one thing though, leaving my hometown as soon as possible.
There was this fear that most high school students from Salinas had when their senior year approached. If you didn’t leave for college, you would never leave and live the rest of your life in that little farm town where no one outside of the Monterey Bay Area knows you exist. I wasn’t any different. I didn’t know where I wanted to go, I just knew I had to leave.
So I applied to three different colleges: San Jose State University, San Francisco State University and CSUEB. At the time I was a Computer Science Major so with SJSU being so close to Silicon Valley, it was very competitive and I was denied. While SFSU was my dream school at the time, being rejected by SJSU struck me to my core. With my confidence at an all-time low, I thought I would be denied by my dream school and decided to accept admission at my backup school, a college I applied to because only a handful of people from my home town knew it existed, CSUEB.
However, a week after accepting admission to CSUEB, I received my acceptance letter from SFSU in the mail. So there I was, stuck going to a college that I honestly didn’t want to go to after giving up hope that my dream college would accept me. At least, that’s what I thought at first.
My first year of college wasn’t anything to write home about. Although I kept my grades up, I went through my days listless, blaming the college I was at for the things I was feeling. It wasn’t until the middle of my second year at CSUEB was where I realized what was wrong. It wasn’t the campus, it was the major.
After a realization during my final for Introduction to Coding, I knew the Computer Science life wasn’t for me. Although I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I knew programming was not it.
After what felt like an endless amount of days, I settled on majoring in Communication. If it wasn’t for the Public Speaking course I took freshman year, I would have never learned about the Communication Department.
Two academic years passed by and I was still trying to figure out what to do with my life. Then along came Dr. Nolan Higdon. It was his Journalism Theory and Practice class that truly put me on my path to Editor-In-Chief. It was the first time an article I wrote in class was published in The Pioneer, and on the front page, nonetheless. Seeing my writing in a newspaper lit a fire under me and I finally knew what I wanted to do as a career. The rest, as they say, is history.
Starting out as an intern for the Summer session at The Pioneer, I was able to learn from that iteration of The Pioneer staff on how the paper truly works. Sadly, that was the last time I was able to learn from those individuals as they had all graduated as it was their last term with the paper.
Come that following Fall, I was chosen to fill the Copy Editor position, which gave me a bigger understanding of what it takes to run a newspaper. In the final weeks of the Fall session, the previous Editor-In-Chief Jessica Irrera informed me that she chose me as her successor.
Although I was chosen to be the next Editor-in-Chief, I know I am not yet ready to fully inherit the title and the responsibilities that the position entails. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to learn. With my amazing staff and interns eager to write, I am confident in saying The Pioneer is in good hands.
I want to welcome any students, faculty and staff who are interested to join our Monday evening meetings in The Pioneer office (MI 1076) at 4pm to pitch ideas for future issues.