My time in the newsroom

I’m writing this during my last day inside the walls of the office at The Record, and the last time I’ll ever get to use the trusty old dinosaur of an iMac that was set up just so that I could come onto the team. I can’t say that I’ll miss having to wait for it to load up every time I went to write something out, but I will miss coming in to write about the region that made me the person I am today.
Being stuck without a job with all the usual summer spots all dried up because of the pandemic, I jumped on the opportunity to work somewhere that would get me out of the house. And get me out it did. Even on my first day I was thrown right into things. There’s no time to sit around in the newsroom, you’ve got deadlines to follow!
Following new stories every day, and needing to interview, research, then write each one usually all in the span of a couple of hours sure felt like a whirlwind to me. I was used to the week-long, loose deadlines you get with your writing courses in college.
Even though all of that sure threw me for a loop, I started to realise that with every story I was learning more and more about the place I grew up in. I was meeting new people – important people that I had no clue played such a big part in shaping the region.
I interviewed the mayor of Sherbrooke, the heads of local organizations, the deans of universities, and plenty of people who just had an interesting story to tell. The eight weeks I spent with The Record have taught me more about the place I live in than all the rest of my work experience combined.