One day as a Junior in High School, not wanting to go home, I decided to go to the newspaper meeting that was being held in the class right next to my locker. It sounded interesting, and when elections came, I ran for Layout Editor, on the basis that I knew a few graphic designers and liked art. This got me the job.

Our advisor was a journalism major, so once each month, having gathered the paltry articles and photos we needed for an issue (our school was more focused on yearbooks and we were just starting up. We had no wire content, a staff as small as five people, and very little news to report about), we would sit at the computer in his room and lay out the pages.

As a Senior, this operation would come home with me, and I would spend a few hours laying out the paper at my house. Though I had become Editor-in-Chief, we hadn't found a new Layout Manager.

Looking back on the "paper" - a regularly four page print with no running content, egregious amounts of white space, and little to no layout standards, it seems amazing that our advisor was excited about the paper starting up. Then again, given my interest in newspapers, I would have been too.