“Step up or step out”

By Rachel Lyons / Staff Writer

I’ve always been told that we are our own harshest critic. This has been especially true for me the past couple of weeks because I haven’t thought my writing for The Collegian was “up to par” or at least up to its normal quality.

The point is, this self-criticism turns from being honest and “useful” in a way to being overly critical and harsh so you can’t take pride in your work because you don’t think it’s good enough.

In the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been proud of my work because it hasn’t been at the quality I expect from myself. But then, I have to remember that in writing those pieces I learned more than I would have by staying in my comfort zone and writing columns on random subjects. It’s been an enjoyable ride through writing all those pieces.

I step back and look and I see a lack of quality on my part. Often, we as a population are so caught up on what we see when we step back that we forget the outstanding factors that may contribute.

Sometimes, contributing factors ground us and bring us back down to reality by showing us that we have learned and grown from the small mistakes made. 

Take, for example, my news stories the past couple of weeks. I’ve had some tight deadlines trying to get those articles in on time, and as a result of trying to meet the deadline and my own inexperience, we have the perfect storm that is those articles.

I also then have to stop and remind myself that prior to this year, I’ve never done any kind of true newspaper writing, but I grew up with one of my parents telling me that I should, “Either step up or step out,” which is all fine and good, until you realize that sometimes stepping up looks different. Just by writing the article and being willing to fail you’ve stepped up. 

Overall, I’m glad that I stepped up and took the opportunity to step outside of just column or opinion writing, and I’m not going to stop making myself take these opportunities. But, it might be time to take a moment to stop, breathe, and reflect before diving in headfirst again.

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