At the end of last year, the Harbinger Staff received bittersweet news that our advisor, Mary Beth Stuller would be starting a graduate program at Johns Hopkins University and could no longer run the journalism program. It was hard to accept the fact that we wouldn’t get to laugh at her awkward jokes or her InDesign skills anymore, but we were excited that she received this well-deserved opportunity.
“I already know [what I miss most] –I miss the students,” Stuller said. “I just don’t have the same rapport in an English class that I do in the journalism class. I feel like I made friends with my students and I don’t get to do that in a regular classroom.”
Even though it was hard to say goodbye to her students, Stuller always knew she wanted to go back to school.
“It was on my bucket list. Even if I won the lottery tomorrow, I would still pursue this grad program because I love writing,” Stuller said. “Also, more primitive reasoning, it’s going to help my pay scale for work, so the more graduate credits I have, the higher my salary will be.”
The class is taught through a teleconference, “which is a little awkward but I’m getting used to it,” Stuller said. “I did yell at the screen one time in a reaction to what a classmate was saying and then I forgot he could hear me so that was a little awkward.”
It’s comments like this and her quirky sense of humor that made the thought of getting another teacher so hard. Although, since the first day of class our new advisor, Megan Hamilton has made us all determined to put out the best paper we can and has kept us laughing in the process.
“[I decided to take over the journalism program this year because] I thought it would be a really good opportunity to do something new,” Hamilton said. “I feel really strongly about effective communication about important ideas and so I thought it would be an opportunity for me to play a role in teaching kids how to do that.”
The Harbinger staff is very grateful to be able to have learned from two different journalism perspectives, and we look forward to working with Mrs. Hamilton throughout the year.