“Swan Songs,” a tradition at the Technique where senior staff members get to write something of a “farewell piece” before their graduation. Even after I started writing for the paper, I never actually thought about having to do one until approximately this semester. But now we’re here.
I can’t say that I know how to go about writing this article without sounding like the final monologue of a mid-2000s coming-of-age movie. What I can certainly say, though, is that my time at Tech has not been what I was expecting when I clicked the acceptance offer back in 2021.
My introduction to the Technique came not from picking up the paper or from the org fair on Tech Green, or even from doing newspaper in high school, but rather in the front seat of a carpool ride. After listening to me talk about a concert I had recently gone to for a few minutes, the driver asked if I had any interest in writing about the alternative music scene in Atlanta for the school paper, otherwise known as the Technique. I said I would be willing to give it a shot. Several weeks later, I had my first media and photo pass to a show at the Masquerade.
During my first semester as a contributor, I wrote sporadically, specifically about music. However, my first year at Tech eventually came to a close, and with it came my application for the entertainment staff writer position.
Now, so as not to drag this little recap on for another several eye-rollingly nostalgic paragraphs, we fast-forward three-and-a-half years to the final weeks of a completely unpredictable college experience.
I began at Tech as an Electrical Engineering major. As I took classes, I began to feel like something was wrong; something was missing. So, I figured I was in the wrong area and switched my major over to mechanical engineering. This is when that fateful carpool ride happened. I thought the Technique would give me at least a temporary break from the agonizing hours and hours of numbers and equations and classes where it felt like black-and-white thinking came first and creativity came 27th. In a way, it did. But, more importantly, what it actually did was reignite the love of writing that I had shoved to the bottom of my priority list at the behest of my ever-present pile of homework.
It was at least partially because of the Technique that I switched my major for the second and final time to Literature, Media and Communication. There, I finally felt like I was back in “my element.” This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy some of my engineering studies, but now I understood what it felt like to hear my friends talk about their majors with passion and excitement.
Regardless of how many things have changed for me during college, my journey with the Technique has been a constant, even in the way it has changed. I went from contributor to staff writer to assistant entertainment editor, expanded my newly formed journalistic love past just music and into other areas of entertainment and begrudgingly got used to not including Oxford commas in my articles.
Still, even as I currently rave about how impactful my experience with the Technique has been, I find myself just as shocked as every other person who says, “What!? You did that because of the school paper? Really?” when I tell them what I’ve been up to after my first year. It doesn’t always feel real.
In absolutely no universe would I have expected to go from a random contributor who wrote the occasional music piece to the assistant editor of the entertainment section, going to early movie screenings and doing one-on-one interviews with actors, directors and musicians.
I look back at friends I’ve made, events I’ve gotten to experience and opportunities I’ve had — both in and out of school — and it sounds extremely cliche to say that so much of it has, in some way, shape or form, been thanks to the Technique. But when I say “opportunity,” I don’t just mean invites to cool events— I mean the opportunity to discover a field that I now absolutely love and the opportunity to learn about myself and to see myself grow and gain confidence in every facet of my life, not just my writing.
Even while I’ve been writing this, actively pressing keys, I’ve been trying to figure out whether this would have some kind of “message” or “moral” built in. While I know that wouldn’t beat the “final monologue of a mid-2000s coming-of-age movie” allegations, I will say that it’s important to remember that not everything is set in stone. What I thought would be my path through Georgia Tech was far from the actual one I took. Otherwise, I’d probably be getting ready to graduate with an Electrical Engineering degree.
It’s not the “path less traveled” thing either, though. The Technique was there before everyone on staff currently, and it will continue to be there after many of us graduate this year. Every seemingly inconsequential decision we make, every “sure, why not” we say, it all plays a role in the people we become, whether we realize it or not. I didn’t realize it when I walked into the old, pre-student-center-era media office for the first time, but I do now, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.
As I said before, the Technique was there long before me, and it will keep going after me; all I can hope is that I’ll be leaving something positive behind in exchange for the positivity that it has given me.