It’s been four years, but now it’s time to say goodbye.
It is incredibly sad to think that this will be the last time I write for The Mirror and that I will have my name printed in this campus newspaper, but I know it will not be the last time I do journalism.
Even before I got to campus as a freshman, I remember taking a tour and coming to the lower level of the BCC, where I saw the office for the first time.
Seeing the room and all the papers around was a really cool experience. If I’m honest, I was even more impressed with a whiteboard on the wall with all the graphic design information. At that point, those letters and numbers made no sense, but I still have the picture of the whiteboard saved on my camera roll.
Fast forward to that September and I was a freshman on campus working as the Assistant News Editor. My first article? An opinion piece talking about the new Company Scholar program that made my education at Fairfield a reality. My first “real” news story? An article about Professor Gavriel Rosenfeld, who was named president of the Center for Jewish History.
During my time here with The Mirror, I have been all over the place (in a good way). I have written articles on campus news, sports, town politics and juicy investigative stories about what happens behind the scenes at Fairfield.
If you ask which stories are some of my favorite pieces, I have to say my “Protect the Beach” article from Nov. 2023, the pieces I did for The Rearview on the Top 25 AP Poll rankings for the women’s basketball team in 2024, the investigative piece into the university’s role in the 2023 SantaCon and the fallout from last year’s SantaCon, including a story on a student who was arrested (which was used by The Independent in their own reporting).
There are also a lot of stories that didn’t make the print cut because of time constraints, because we couldn’t verify the information we received (looking at you Costa Rica!) or because another, better story came up.
However, the stories that did get published reflect my growth over the past four years.
To that, I have to thank my advisors, especially professors Tommy Xie and Karla Barguiarena, who have been a source of support and mentorship through my time here at Fairfield. I really appreciate your help and your feedback, especially on some of the crazy stories that had me think twice about what I was writing.
To the many administrators who might have received “requests for information” emails from me, I also appreciate your work, not because you made it easy (believe me, it wasn’t), but because the challenges you all posed allowed me to be the creative reporter that I am right now.
To everyone who I have worked with, my biggest appreciation to you guys.
I will fully miss coming to the office on Mondays and Tuesdays to hang out in the office under the excuse that we were working on our layout. I will miss sending those “hi friends” emails with all the website merger announcements. I will miss saying those out-of-pocket comments and beefing up with the 5×4 council.
A Mirror goodbye would not be one without the news desk, my home.
Olivia and Brenna, first of all, we survived the madness of 2026. I honestly don’t know how we managed to fill up four pages of content every week, but somehow we did. Will I miss the chaos of Tuesday mornings? Probably not, but I hope you both enjoyed this year as much as I did.
Kathleen and Danny, what a ride! We are finally editing our last batch of articles and sending our last issue to print. There’s actually so much I would say to both of you, but I’m not sure we can actually print it.
I do want to say that I’m really proud of the work we did and how this year came out. I’m excited to see what you guys will do afterwards.
Today, four years and 92 published articles later, I’m here, inside the Mirror office, writing this opinion piece, attempting to say goodbye.
Finally, to all my Mirror friends and those who have contributed to The Mirror in some sort of way, my message for you all is simple: don’t underestimate the value of the work we do here.
In a time where everyone gets their information from emails, Instagram and Fizz, we exist to uncover what others can’t and to bring light to the problems that affect us as students, but that no one pays attention to.
What you do matters. Don’t let anyone take that away from you. But above all, have fun and don’t forget that AP Style does not do the Oxford comma!
