What a summer it’s been.

Mine began with three big problems-my boyfriend left for New York for the entire summer, I had to take an economics class as my senior seminar and I stayed up very late most nights thinking about how I misspelled “rapport” about 10 times in my job application for Editor-in-Chief.

If only I had known about the problems that lay ahead, I probably wouldn’t have stressed out about those things so much.

I applied for the position of Editor-in-Chief not just for the tuition benefits or the fact that I would be away from my hometown for the summer. I really wanted the chance to prove to certain people that I wasn’t as inexperienced or dumb as they thought I was. I ended up proving to myself that I was capable of taking on such a huge responsibility without the crutch of my parents or boyfriend forcing me along the way.

Don’t get me wrong, I did have fun, but the majority of my time was spent in a near-constant state of worry.

As summer Editor-in-Chief, I had to not only do regular EIC activities, such as help reporters and come up with ideas, but I also had to write, design pages, copy edit, post online and take photos.

But all of that was easy in comparison.

The deaths of Andrew Galo, a friend of mine and a close friend of my boyfriend, and Cameron Chana, a friend of many people I know, were hard enough to even deal with and even harder to write about.

The phone call to Chana’s family and the conversation I had with his father will remain in my memory forever, as will the visualization of Galo’s face and the way he used to smile whenever he walked into a room.

But I digress.

The hardest part was trying to juggle everything while not really knowing what I was doing.

I come from an entertainment reporting background. Before this summer, I knew nothing about FutureGen, zoning issues, the Charleston city council, etc. If it weren’t for the help from my amazing staff, my advisers and some very nice people at the Journal-Gazette Times Courier, this paper would have completely fallen apart.

I know that I made a lot of mistakes over the last two months, but every mistake has been a learning experience.

It’s like that Thomas Edison story. Edison failed 1,000 times when trying to create the light bulb. When asked about it, Edison allegedly said, “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb.”

I hope everyone enjoys their final weeks of summer before getting back to the daily grind. I know I could definitely use a break.

Sarah Jean Bresnahan is a senior journalism major. She can be reached at DENopinions@gmail.com or 581-7942.