Here’s an email I sent on March 27, 2023:

“This is Lucia from the writing for The DePaulia class. It’s my first day so I was a little intimidated but would love to express interest to jump on the pitch to write about Jimmy Carter for a piece. I’m a political science major and think I have a lot of valuable sources I could use. Let me know what you think or if that’s possible!! :)” 

I treated reaching out to write my first DePaulia article like I was shooting my shot with my celebrity crush. I was petrified and had to shut my phone off after pressing send. A tribute to Jimmy Carter seemed like the perfect place to start, shortly after it was announced that the former president would be entering hospice care. 

From that point on, it was a devotion. I was addicted. I had caught the journalism bug. I wanted all the pieces with my “Contributing Writer” to be perfect. That’s why I cried over the Jimmy Carter piece over Easter weekend in Cleveland with my family, because there were so many edits from the daunting DePaulia staff. And why I cried, again, on the following Monday when I noticed my story didn’t get published after all. 

I grew a thicker skin, quickly. Thank goodness, because I don’t know if I could’ve gone very far with journalism without it. I shed the personality from constructive criticism and began to be grateful for it. Every week I’d wait in anxious anticipation after filing a story about the shooting in Allen, Texas, or the loosening marijuana laws in Illinois. 

It’s a feeling of excitement that hasn’t gone away as I’ve moved through my own staff positions at The DePaulia to become the paper’s editor-in-chief. I (try to) keep pushing stories that I want to write and I think need to be written for my community. I file them in the same spreadsheet I did when I was a sophomore and wait for the edits to roll in. 

When I joined student media, I don’t think I was aware of its importance or impact. It wasn’t something I could name but rather a force drawing me in that I couldn’t ignore. The answer to the question of how I could make art in my own way while fulfilling a lifelong ambition for public service.

The tangibility of the importance and impact of student media came to me at a time similar to the rest of the country, when protest encampments in solidarity with Gaza began popping at endless universities. 

Columbia University’s student radio station, WKCR, took the spotlight last May when they did a live broadcast of the school’s encampment, including the violent NYPD raid that saw the arrests of over 100 students. 

Endless news articles on major platforms were written about student media’s unique ability to cover university news that seeped into major national news. Students were able to bear witness to on-campus news as it happened, as most campuses were closed to those without a university ID. The Guardian and NPR both highlighted WKCR’s undeniable commitment to delivering news to their school communities — and beyond — for days and days on end. 

This time was special for me. The DePaulia also got a shoutout for their work by the Chicago Tribune. On a random Saturday on DePaul’s Quad, I did an interview with a Tribune summer intern to speak about my experience as a student journalist without thinking much of it. 

One day last spring when I was abandoning my end-of-year responsibilities at Lake Michigan, I checked my phone to see the story — along with a photograph of me and my team — on the front page of a Chicago newspaper I had come to admire greatly. 

It was an honor that I couldn’t comprehend, and that I didn’t feel worthy of. It was a time where my peers and I were averaging a couple hours of sleep a night and clocking in 12 plus hours a day on DePaul’s Quad. We watched as the Chicago Police Department violently raided the encampment at 5 a.m. on May 16, 2024. We saw the bravery, commitment and connection the student protestors had for their cause. 

A year later, the same team who live-reported for 17 days straight, was honored with a Peter Lisagor Award, one of the highest honors for Chicago journalists. We beat the outlets we strive to work for; and it was a surprise to say the very least. 

My journey at The DePaulia has been filled with experiences that I didn’t anticipate from student media. Maybe I had the same disregard for a school newspaper as people expressed to me sometimes, but time and time again we proved me wrong.

Those experiences go past learning to recover from the dreaded imposter syndrome and into developing a deeper understanding for the purpose of journalism. It wasn’t to win awards and become more confident in the newsroom but to form connections with my community and serve my neighborhoods. 

That was the pull bringing me into student media’s unique landscape of learning and growing. 

I hope student media continues to get the recognition they deserve and that the future leaders of The DePaulia will continue to find the true purpose of journalism.