The publishing of this article marks the last time I will see my name in a Ticker byline and the end of my run as the editor-in-chief of this beloved newspaper.

Being in The Ticker has been one of the most defining parts of my college experience.

I got involved with The Ticker as a freshman. After being the editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper, I decided to sign up at convocation. I wrote my first article that week for the opinions section.

In the spring, I began writing for the section I eventually became the editor of in my junior year: news. I wrote club profiles and covered the Women’s History Month opening ceremony.

Just as I started to get the hang of in-person interviews, the COVID-19 pandemic happened. CUNY sent us home for the rest of the semester, and unbeknownst to us at the time, until fall 2021.

With more spare time, I began writing more consistently. In my sophomore year, I became the Undergraduate Student Government correspondent. I attended weekly senate meetings and covered the important issues discussed.

I was appointed as news editor in my third year. My responsibilities included coming up with topics each week and learning to evaluate whether a story was newsworthy. I edited about 10 articles per week, working one-on-one with writers to help them improve.

This past year, I became the editor-in-chief, hoping to continue the great work of my predecessors. This past semester has been my toughest, but most rewarding time in The Ticker.

Print production of our newspaper began. It brought a myriad of hardships: making last-minute calls, working late in the media suite, trying to figure out InDesign and staying up past midnight to put the PDF together.

However, it marked a huge achievement for us. I am so incredibly proud of how hard my staff worked to make these 12 print issues happen, despite not having prior experience with print production.

In my experience, journalism gives you many transferable skills, the most obvious being writing. The more you write, the better writer you will become — and in journalism, you write a lot, especially for a weekly newspaper like The Ticker.

The learning-by-doing approach gives you the chance to make mistakes, get feedback and incorporate it right away in your next piece.

Distilling 40 or more minutes of interview footage into a 500-word article is not easy. But when you write every week for The Ticker, you learn how to discern what is important information and what can be left out.

However, writing isn’t the only skill I learned. I gained interpersonal experience from interviewing people for articles and working with vendors and administration.

I learned how to meet quick deadlines, only having a few days between signing up for a topic and submitting a final product.

I gained teamwork skills, working alongside talented editors and writers. I learned how to be a leader by starting new initiatives, being communicative, delegating tasks and making judgment calls.

Most of all, I gained friendship with a fantastic group of caring, dedicated student journalists, whom I will miss terribly.

My love for journalism began with The Ticker. Though I do not plan to pursue a career as a journalist, I am eternally grateful for the skills and growth I gained as one.

The Ticker will always have a special place in my heart.