A lot of people don’t understand how much of a responsibility being in newspaper is and how much work we put into it.

Most people, even parents, think that we don’t work on it during class and that we don’t do anything except sit there and talk about nothing in particular, and have even asked “why don’t y’all work on the newspaper during your class time?”

Well, we do talk for like one or two days, but it’s just so that we can decide on what to write about and who is going to cover it. I mean, you can’t really publish a newspaper without knowing who is doing what.

What people may not know is that our class is only about 45 minutes long. During that time, everyone is running around trying to find the people that they have to interview or taking pictures for the paper, so they can work on the story they were assigned to do. Sometimes, most of us have to wait for the people to respond to their e-mails or calls so that they can schedule the interview with them, or wait and see what the comic is going to be about.

By the time everyone has what they need, deadline week has come, so we are all getting just a little frustrated and we start to panic because not everyone is done with their assignments.

So we have to have work nights to get everything done, which brings us back to why the question was asked in the first place. Having to have work nights isn’t because we don’t do our work during class, it’s because we really don’t have enough time to take care of everything during class. People don’t realize how much goes into putting the paper together. So these work nights are a huge help for us because they allow us to make sure all the stories are on the page, as well as the ads and comic and anything else that is supposed to be on the pages, before they get sent off to be printed.

Being in the newspaper work does have its moments of bitterness, but it is totally worth it, once everything is done.