Four months ago Francesca and I sat down together with one task and zero idea how to accomplish it: to write our first blog entry. Without having had any prior experience, it was a surreal idea to think that what we wrote would be readily available to anyone to read. We were anxious, excited, and nervous (or perhaps it was just me) but now – approximately 24 individual blog entries later – we can say it finally seems as though we’ve navigated our way through the blogosphere. Well, at least a little bit!
This reflection of the past semester is tough for me personally because I’m not sure how to put into words how wonderful of an opportunity this has been. I haven’t fully understood what a privilege it has been to write for The New until my previous entry, This Is Important To Me , when I finally realized that I can write on things that are deeply important to me.
That said, this job has given me the chance to speak on numerous topics that I’ve always wanted to share, including How to Love Being Single on Valentine’s Day, sharing hidden gems at our own University, my love affair with New College, and even spreading a little bit of wisdom about surviving exams (from other students, not me!).
The New has been an absolutely incredible experience that has provided me with an inside understanding on what it’s like to be a real life blogger – something I never thought would happen, but I’m so glad it did. To keep it short (mostly out of fear of getting too cheesy), I can only say that I hope you’ve enjoyed The New as much as I have.
#Julia Tsang
Like Julia, I also found working for The New to be a really great opportunity. I’m sad to be at the end of our term, but also very proud of us when I look back at what we accomplished. From writing our first post together, all the way to this final joint effort, I think that we grew into our blogging styles and produced some pretty good stuff along the way, if I do say so myself 
I remember seeing the “need student bloggers” posters back in first semester, and I thought that I would just apply and see how it went. As soon as we were hired, we were put to work right away doing things like setting up social media outlets (with Julia as “Twitter Captain”…I had never tweeted before in my life!) and coming up with an “ideas bank” of possible article topics.
After we started working together for a bit, I think the team at The New really started to find our rhythm. Monday morning meetings became part of the routine, and writing/sending in/editing/re-writing/fixing up previous posts all fell into place. Establishing a routine allowed us to do some pretty cool work and explore issues we were really interested in. I took on a number of events, interviews and activities in the name of investigative journalism so I could write about interesting and different topics each week.
The best part about being a blogger at The New was definitely the amount of support I received from friends, relatives, Facebook fans, and The New’s first super fan (shout out to my little sister, Genevieve! She read our first post so much she could quote it the next day…now that’s dedication).
One of the hardest posts to write was “When One Door Closes..” because it was so difficult to put my emotions into words, and I was anxious about how people would view me after it was posted. Experiencing the flood of well wishes and encouraging feedback from my peers was both unexpected and incredible. Seeing the level support and dedication from readers of The New was beyond what I would have imagined it to be. It really made the job worth it, and also reminded me how much I love New College 
To all of you fans out there: although we are taking a break over the summer, I hope that you stay tuned for what next year’s New Bloggers have to bring. I would love nothing more than to see your continued support for the blog. Thank you for your feedback…it was really awesome when we found out people were actually reading our posts!
From The New to you, wishing you a very safe and happy summer. I can’t wait to see all of your lovely faces when we come back for frosh week
#Francesca Gottschalk
