The confetti is still sitting on my desk.

One year later, the colors have faded a little and the pieces curl at the edges now, but I still can’t bring myself to throw it away.

Last spring, the former Editors-in-Chief came to my house to tell me I would be the next Editor-in-Chief of the Bark. Before they left, they popped confetti in the driveway while my family stood outside cheering. I remember laughing, hugging everyone and trying to process what had just happened. Then, after everyone went home, I walked back outside and started picking pieces of confetti up off the ground.

I ended up putting all of it into a mason jar and leaving it on my desk. Somehow, it never moved from that spot.

I’ve looked at that mason jar every single day since then. Sometimes I looked at it while I edited pages late at night after hours fixing stories and layouts. Sometimes I looked at it after difficult paste-up nights when everything seemed to be going wrong. Other times, I looked at it during moments when I questioned whether I was doing enough for the program or whether I was leading the way I was supposed to.

And every time, it reminded me of the same thing: how lucky I was to be there at all.

I think people outside of journalism see the finished product. They see the newspaper on distribution day or an article posted online. What they don’t see are the nights spent in the newsroom after dark, the stress before deadlines, the constant problem-solving or the amount of yourself you slowly pour into the program without even realizing it. The Bark became more than a class to me long before I became Editor-in-Chief.

It became the place where I spent most of my high school years. The place where I figured out what kind of work mattered to me. The place where I learned how to talk to people, how to listen carefully and how to care deeply about stories outside of my own experience. But more than anything, it became the place where I found purpose.

There were times when I felt exhausted. Times when being Editor-in-Chief felt overwhelming in ways I didn’t expect. It is strange being responsible for something you love so much, because you care about every little detail almost too much. You carry deadlines, stories, paste-up nights and the weight of making sure everyone around you feels supported all at once. But every time I felt myself losing motivation, I would look over at that jar sitting on my desk. And I would remember being the younger version of myself who would have done anything to be here.

I would remember sophomore-year me staying late after school because I never wanted to leave the newsroom. I would remember how badly I wanted to grow into the kind of editor I looked up to at the time. I would remember that being part of the Bark was never something I took for granted. That jar became a reminder not to lose perspective.

Very few people get to find something during high school that changes the direction of their life. The Bark did that for me. It gave me the career I want to pursue, some of the most important relationships of my life and a version of myself that feels more confident than the person who first walked into room 177 three years ago.

Now that graduation gets closer, I keep thinking about the fact that soon the jar will be nothing but my memories. And honestly, I don’t think I will ever look at confetti the same way again. Because to everyone else, it probably just looks like scraps of paper in a mason jar. But to me, it became proof of how much this program meant, and still means, to me.