After four years of being a part of this amazing club, it is finally time for me to say goodbye to Smoke Signals. I joined the school newspaper freshman year, where I started writing articles for each print edition. I quickly fell in love with this program and decided I wanted to become more involved. For my sophomore year, I advanced to a Layout Editor, where I not only was allowed to write articles, but I could also help to create the paper with designing where to put pictures and the layout of the text. I was a Layout Editor for two years, and then I decided to go for Editor-In-Chief for my senior year. 

This amazing club became a huge creative outlet for me, as it allowed me to write about whatever I wanted to, increasing my writing quality and ability, while enhancing my knowledge in digital design at the same time. I love how close-knit this club is with each other. My favorite memories from the club all involve talking to my peers about design or editing ideas, and being able to troubleshoot all of our ideas off of each other. Everyone being so friendly and supportive with each other made this club so much fun, and along with the guidance from Mrs. Nazarko and Mrs. Hannon, we were all able to increase our editing knowledge together. 

Next year I will be attending Stevens Institute of Technology as a Mechanical Engineering major. I really hope that I will be able to continue writing through college, as this club has meant so much to me over the past four years. I am grateful for my time at Wayne Valley and all of the amazing opportunities and experiences that I have had, but I am very excited to move on to this next chapter in my life. I am so happy to have made all the friends that I have met at Valley, and I am glad I signed up for a ton of clubs and activities that made my time here fly by. My advice to underclassmen is to never hold back, and to sign up for everything you want to be a part of. By constantly challenging myself with after school activities and classes that I never thought I’d take, I made the most of my high school experience and wouldn’t change it for the world. Do not forget to live in the moment, because time in high school truly flies by. Thank you to all of my fellow editors of Smoke Signals for always being so supportive: I know me and my fellow Editors-in-Chiefs, Neha Chandra and Jeana Fermi, are leaving this paper in the best hands. Good luck to everyone in Smoke Signals next year, and I hope you all have an amazing year!