“Odessa, I think you should apply for Senior Editor,” Ms. Adrianne said to me after she called me outside to talk to her. Senior Editor? I was expecting her to talk to me about something important, but it was most definitely not that. 

Let’s backtrack a bit. When the roles were announced, I immediately crossed Sr. Editor off my list of roles I wanted to apply for. High school senior, taking three APs (one of them being research), doing volunteer work, and having to finish college applications? No way could I handle responsibility as heavy as being the leader of the entire publication, much less a publication that had to be made from scratch. 

Yet Ms. Adrianne believed I could do it. She believed that my initiative, paired with my ability to be a team player made me a well-qualified candidate. And true to Ms. Adrianne’s words, I was voted into the position. The real work began once the middle and high school staff started working together. To be frank, it was chaotic navigating power dynamics between the two classes, figuring out what direction we as the executive team (the student leadership of the newspaper) wanted to take with The Echo, all while trying to quickly jumpstart our first publication. Doing all this was in short, the definition of entropy, because of how much we had to do in so little time.

But now we’re here, with 6 polished publication issues under our belt, including several podcast episodes and renditions of the literary magazine. I am so incredibly proud of the hard work of all our middle and high school journalists, editors, writers, and photographers alike. You all rose to the occasion and showed your best work for every single publication and have shown immense improvement in all of your writing. I’m really happy that I’ve got to see you all grow in the ways that you did.

To all the readers who have stuck with us since the newbie stages of our publications, thank you so much for your support. Your eagerness to read our articles and the positive comments that you leave truly motivates our writers to keep writing stories that not only interest them but also you, our audience. We hope you’ve enjoyed our stories and articles as much as we did. 

As this letter comes to an end, the time comes for me to say my closing remarks. It has been a pleasure being your Sr. Editor-In-Chief for the 2021-2022 school year, and I want to extend my personal thanks to Ms. Adrianne and Ms. Valera for all their support and encouragement throughout the creation of the newspaper. With their help and advocacy to make this newspaper possible, I can’t imagine how far we would have gotten without them.

I wish all the current and future staff of The Echo the best of luck in their future endeavors in journalism, and can’t wait to see what the future looks like for our (not-so-newly) established newspaper 🙂

Sr. Editor-In-Chief signing out,

Odessa Castillo