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.
“Katie, you walk like you have another state to be in,” is a running bit that has sprung up around The Collegian’s newsroom this year — a moment that perfectly captures how this newsroom brought me back to Colorado off a single recommendation and phone call. A space, windowless but altogether charming, that would provide me with the greatest lessons of my college career, some of my closest relationships with the most amazing people, and allow me to complete a silent mission of my own: to find myself again.
Having just transferred from another college, I was running on stress of having moved into my third dorm and second university within a six-month span. In our Wednesday superdesk meetings, first as a staff reporter, I found a calmness, a stabilizing force and a reminder of why I love journalism: the storytelling abilities and raw human experiences we have the fortunate privilege to gain an inside, and often intimate, view into.
At these meetings, I met editors and mentors who would become people I am lucky to now call my friends, Christian Arndt and Hannah Parcells, whose consistent guidance, wit and humor made me feel right at home. And Allie Siebel, whose leadership, drive and candor marvel me to this day.
I also soon learned about a desk and coverage topic I had never considered: science, a word that used to spike an instant grimace from me. The subject I never got. Biology, I somewhat understood; physics, forget it. I had succumbed to the perspective that there was no place for me in STEM. But after one random visit to the Zoology Club, where I met a researcher studying bats with the help of climbers, a story idea was pitched, and I was hooked.
Science reporting has taken me to places I never imagined, from looking at asbestos in the geology archives and holding a walrus skull, to walking down the 3D-rendering of an esophagus in virtual reality and my annual psychology profile. Each allowed me to grow as a reporter and science communicator, understanding not just the hard science and statistics but the driving motivations behind every person who welcomed me into their labs and offices. I am eternally thankful for your time and trust. Was it always easy? Hardly. But looking back now, every late night of fact-checking, macroediting and writing was worth it.
As I prepare to walk, not run, away from The Collegian for the last time, that rope of intrigue continues to pull back. Not for more stories, but for where we will all go next. Its gentle tug is a reminder of just how fortunate I have been to meet these amazing people at this time and place. I am going to miss our time in the newsroom, from bouncing ideas off each other and debating movies, to random lunch or lobby shop runs.
To my fellow superdesk editors, Aubree Miller, Ruby Secrest and Chloe Waskey, you are all incredible, dynamic storytellers whom I will miss extremely. Laila Shekarchian, thank you for putting up with me from early high school to college. I loved working alongside you, and I doubt this will be the last time we do so.
To Michael Hovey, Sophie Webb, Cait Mckinzie, Sofia Raikow, Emma Souza and Alli Adams, thank you for making every content meeting a joy, always being down for a chat and putting up with my late visual requests. Gigi Young, I will forever admire your intellect and perspective and will hold our last-minute Alley Cat trips and movie theater evenings close to my heart.
Claire Vogl and Willow Engle, my copy heroes who have embraced my long-winded, detail-ridden stories both in writing and spoken form, I will miss you more than I can describe. I would drop my phone into beans for you two a million times over.
And lastly, to my own mission, thank you, Collegian, for putting me back together. For helping me to find myself again, for allowing me to learn again how to stand behind my writing and my perspectives and for showing me that there were people who would accept and welcome me for exactly who I am, while pushing me to be the best I can be. For opening doors, both personally and professionally, across this campus that I never would have found if I had not first speed-walked into the newsroom all those years ago now.
And as I prepare to walk back out through that door for the last time, I leave whole, complete, happy and slower than I arrived. More present and grounded in the relationships, connections and stories these windowless walls have gifted me. While my gait may not slow down, I will be looking over my shoulder the last time we all walk through that door, catching one more glimpse of the place that put me back together.
Katie Fisher was the 2025-26 executive editor of The Rocky Mountain Collegian. She can no longer be reached at science@collegian.com, but she can be reached on social media @katfish_._.
