Chris Banyas
Life Editor
I applied for a position with The Bengal after hearing about the posting from a friend. Not thinking that anything would come of it, I fired off my writing samples, resume and application to the email address of a person I had never met, to be looked at by people I didn’t know existed.
If you had told me two years ago that I would be selected as the Editor-in-Chief of Idaho State University’s student newspaper, I would have laughed in your face before walking away, thinking about how impossible that scenario was.
I had no prior AP style experience. I was an English major, yes, but I lacked experience with the protocol and general inner-workings of newspapers. I suffered from sometimes crippling self-doubt and to top it all off, I was on a first name basis with Mr. Apathy.
The interview went well, but I did not get the job.
Several months passed and one of the editors took an opportunity elsewhere, causing positions to be moved around and a writer to be needed. So it goes.
Soon I began to work under the people who I didn’t know existed, and rather than treat me like the new guy filling in, the staff, and specifically several editors, started to work with me, to invest a bit of their selves into what I was doing.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Soon I felt under constant threat of a panic attack from having to talk to more people I didn’t know about more things I didn’t know about before writing about them in a style I didn’t know.
The Bengal has had many remarkable editors in the past, but three stand out to me: Nicole Blanchard, Michelle Schraudner and Samantha Chaffin.
Each of these are remarkable in my eyes not just due to anything they ever committed to paper, published and distributed for others to read, or went on to do following their time at The Bengal, but for the time they spent working with me, helping me and encouraging me.
And thanks in large part to their efforts, I find myself back at the beginning, about five seconds away from a panic attack, looking at the impending doom hovering above my head in the form of the editor position for the upcoming year.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
The Bengal has given me so much more than a paycheck and job experience. It has helped me understand myself, and made me far more aware of my surroundings. It has given me another family which I can rely upon in the form of the extremely talented and capable staff.
ISU has perhaps never been at a more critical junction: faculty are divided, dialogues amongst and between students and staff alike seem impossible to initiate or maintain, tuition continues to increase and the administration continues to operate as if nothing is wrong, like nothing has changed… because nothing has.
A newspaper represents far more than eight pages of folded black and white paper. It should represent a unifying symbol of truth for the public.
This newspaper is The Bengal student newspaper. The staff and contributors work week after week on the final product, but the students are who we serve, and at the end of the day students have the power to affect change.
Where to begin? Question everything: fees, decisions, changes. Your money pays for everything. Start talking to people. Become more involved with your future. Don’t take things for granted. Don’t take things lying down. Don’t take any wooden nickels.
After all, nothing changes if nothing changes.
