It’s been a long 365 days.

I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection lately. This ended up coming out in the form of some really bizarro editorials you might have read over the course of this semester, including but not limited to thoughts on emotional brutality through the color pink, death in solitude, and a holy fear of the sun rising. I didn’t go into the role of Co-Editor in Chief with the intent of using the Weather Vane as my own weird personal journal, but I guess that’s how it worked out. 

I’ve been a part of the Weather Vane for three semesters now, and this is my first (and maybe only?) one as a Co-Editor in Chief. I came in with the idea that I wanted to change some things, and I think I did. Maybe not permanently, and maybe not to the extent that I wanted to, but I tried my hardest.

One of the changes I made was in the process of planning out the newspaper, which happens on Wednesday evenings. In the past, meetings were usually just an exchange of pre-approved assignments the Co-Editors put together. Instead of doing that, I set planning meetings up like a conversation, so that Jessica and I were having a conversation with our staff rather than just forcing stories on them. 

Was it perfect? No, but just through the act of listening, meetings were flooding with great story ideas that I hadn’t seen in my previous two semesters of planning meetings. A huge improvement, and all we had to do was listen.

I look at the pieces we’ve compiled from the broader EMU community for this Year in Review, and I see a college that might need to do some self-reflection of its own. To have a community is to have a conversation.

So who is listening?