Four months in the grand scheme of things is a very short time.
Four months is one semester at a university or college, and not even half the year of a high school or elementary school student.
Four months will also mark the end of my time in the Burns Lake community.
I am leaving my position as editor of the Lakes District News to pursue a new opportunity in my field.
I will be the new British Columbia Hockey League beat reporter for the Hockey Now.
For me this is an excellent opportunity in taking the next step in my ultimate desire to write about sports for a living.
This new opportunity will allow me to hopefully flourish as a sports writer and to gain indispensable contacts within the BCHL community.
It will also mean that I will be able to move back the Vancouver area.
With that being said, it will still be sad to leave a community that I have called home for the past four months.
Being the editor of the newspaper you meet many community members over a short period of time, you get to know them, you get to tell their stories.
To the many people that have taken time out of their day to answer a question or to tell me their story I want to say thank you.
Hearing unique stories and being able to write them for many people to read is one of the reasons I enjoy my job so much, it’s about sharing the joys and happiness of people, and also about sharing in the sorrow and hardship.
Being a journalist isn’t always an easy job, it means having to ask the hard questions some of the time, and in a small community that means being guaranteed to see that person around town.
For those who I’ve asked these tough question of, I hope you understand that I had a job to do.
Over my short time here I have been pulled aside and told by whomever that they found a spelling mistake, or a grammatical mistake in one of my articles.
I never took the pointing out as criticism, but rather as caring.
People in this community care about their local newspaper, and trust me that is something that isn’t always the case in some communities.
To Laura, Kim and Annamarie, thank you for helping me these past four months at the newspaper.
It truly takes a team effort to produce a newspaper each week, along with all the updates to various websites.
This newspaper wouldn’t be possible without the hard work and effort that you three put in each week.
You all made doing my job a lot easier.
Finally I would like to thank Laura, specifically.
There are very few publishers that would give someone fresh out of school, looking for their first opportunity to be the editor of a community paper.
It is a position that carries with it a lot of responsibility.
Thank you for giving me the chance to prove myself capable.
I will end on this; thank you Burns Lake and remember no matter what, always double check your spelling of the word public.