Being the editor-in-chief of The Daily Gamecock hadn’t crossed my mind as a possibility before this spring. But as circumstances changed I found myself in a place I didn’t expect, and I had to decide how I would move forward.
Sometimes we have as much time as we need for important decisions in our lives. Sometimes we don’t. It’s easy to look back and spot better or different solutions, but most of the time, we’ve already made the best decision we could.
For the last year, The Daily Gamecock team has been grappling with how to balance a heavy workload while maintaining our mental health. It’s a difficult solution to find because it requires resources a student organization of our size simply doesn't have access to.
As much as I want to be able to look back on my term in this position and see significant change, the last year has taught me that all I can do is to continue taking small steps toward my goals. It takes a lot of steps to look back and find yourself very far from where you began, but only a few to start seeing the impacts change can make.
The first important decision I made when I became editor-in-chief was choosing not to produce content over the summer. It broke a years-long tradition, one I have been a part of, but I knew it was the best decision I could make.
The Daily Gamecock is committed to keeping our campus community informed, but we — just like the peers we report on — are students first. High quality work comes from the ability to periodically rest and choose to pursue activities unrelated to our responsibilities without fear of consequence. We will not learn this the hard way twice.
We will continue, as a team, to build a better work environment for ourselves so that our content remains something we are proud to share with our community.
We will continue to improve the diversity of our staff and our coverage so that our content remains relevant to everyone in our community.
We will continue to raise mental health awareness and resources in our community so that no one has to push themselves past their breaking point before finding help and support.
We will continue building on the commitments we have made so that one day, we can look back and find ourselves strides ahead from where we began.