Editor’s Note: Traditionally, graduating seniors working at The Collegian are given the chance to write a farewell note at the end of their tenure at CSU.

How does one reflect on something that meant simply everything to them?

There have been a few brief, bright, startling times in my life when a long-term dream has come true, and with my tenure at The Collegian, I have experienced the most beautiful reality of a dream I once held.

I have been a journalist in some form or another for my entire life. When I was a kid, my grandparents had an old typewriter at their house in Washington state. We’d travel to visit them several times a year, and as I began to understand how to read, I became obsessed with that typewriter, as well as the story of Kit Kittredge, an American Girl doll that was a journalist in the 1930s and wrote small newspapers for her community on a typewriter.

Maybe my desire to be just like Kit had to do with the fact that we both had short bright blonde bobs, but I became absolutely obsessed with that typewriter and being a journalist. I would write daily mini newspapers for my family for the next ten years — dubbed the Daily Post, my newspapers would chronicle local happenings around the house and the vast expanse of nature I grew up around.

From that moment, being a journalist was all I wanted. In middle school, I was selected to be part of my school’s prestigious broadcast program, as well as on staff for the newspaper. In high school, I was editor in chief of the yearbook, as well as a founder of an online news outlet.

Then, I got to college as a bright-eyed incoming first-year at Colorado State University, finally living out my lifelong dream: I was going to be a journalism major, and I was serious about joining my student newspaper. I couldn’t wait to be surrounded by other like-minded individuals who were passionate about the news. “Maybe I would even get to be editor-in-chief some day,” I remember thinking, which lead me to a table advertising freshman reporter training over the summer, before school even started. I signed up as early and eagerly as I could.

From there, that initial training informed me that The Collegian was hiring a news editor, and, while not widely advertised, I was qualified to apply. I wrote my first ever cover letter, had a trembling online interview with then-Editor in Chief Serena Bettis online at the same house I grew up learning to write in and, to my shock, got the job.

My second day on campus, I sat down for my first ever Collegian training, and was so confused by words that are now second nature to me like “budget,” “in-line photos” and what the real meaning of “production” was that I went back to my brand-new dorm and cried out of sheer confusion and frustration. I felt wildly unprepared for what I had wanted my entire life and like Bettis had made a massive mistake in hiring me.

But, after a few weeks, I learned what to do, and through a truly turbulent freshman year when I often felt isolated and alone, The Collegian became my home.

And then, as I was walking to class in February eyeing a second term as news editor, I got the message encouraging me to apply for editor-in-chief and slipped out of shock, falling flat on a patch of ice under the now-derelict Clark B.

I had a long talk with my family about the realities of the job and applied, expecting not to get it, especially up against a talented senior staff member, Ivy Secrest. To my complete and utter shock, I was granted the honor of taking the reins of The Collegian as a newly minted 19 year old.  For the next two years, I worked with the end goal of being granted the job again and again.

Getting this job, and then being granted it for two more terms, has changed my life in more ways than I can ever comprehend. I try to be as modest as I possibly can, but I am the first, and maybe only, person who will ever have and been able to have had this lengthy of a tenure at this job.

I have lended 119,979 words during four years to this paper. I have met dozens, if not hundreds, of people who have trusted me enough to tell their stories, from their moments of happiness and joy to their moments of anger and sadness. I have had the utmost blessing of guiding three rooms of exceptionally talented editors, where my job has often been to shut up and sit down to allow them to spread their wings and discover their passions.

I have discovered during my time here, especially as my tenure lengthened, that I was seen as terrifying by some people at CSU and around Rocky Mountain Student Media, and, as I leave this workplace, I would like to say I hope that was never true. I was not cutthroat in my ascension to the top of The Collegian; I like to say I was simply in the right place at the right time to get my roles and then handed a beautiful history that was my job of safekeeping. For three years, my first thought each day has had to have been how to protect this paper, how to make it last and how to honor it.

On my best days, The Collegian was there to celebrate and lift me up. On my worst days, it was there to catch me. It has been a part of both my best and worst days as well, the only constant in my life through college. It has transformed me from someone who was quiet and awkward to someone with confidence, poise and strength. I have met countless friends in these pages and found a community I was seeking.

To know me is to know The Collegian. It has been a cloak of identity I have worn with pride and carried with all the honor and respect that a 134-year legacy deserves.

To my family and friends outside of the newspaper community, thank you for always believing in me, always forgiving me when I had to leave dinner abruptly to call CSU for a statement or showed up 10 minutes late off of an assignment. Thank you for deigning to learn more than you probably ever wanted to about student government, local Fort Collins policy and the latest campus drama.

I also owe a massive thanks to every single editor who has worked under my leadership, with a special thanks to my management staff throughout the years: Piper Russell, Bettis, Secrest, Lauren Pallemaets, Adah McMillan, Hannah Parcells, Willow Engle and Claire Vogl, as well as incoming managers Cait Mckinzie and Sophie Webb, thank you for holding me together and sharing in my vision for this newspaper we all love.

As I depart this school and this paper and prepare to retire from my long career as a journalist — for now — in lieu of law school, I know the memories made at The Collegian will define my college experience for the rest of my life.

I have written 119,979 words for this paper, and now, I conclude with two more: Thank you.

Allie Seibel was the 2023-26 editor-in-chief of The Rocky Mountain Collegian. She can no longer be reached at editor@collegian.com, but she can still be reached on social media @allie_seibel_.