What I Learned as a Seventeen-Year-Old Magazine Editor
Don’t be a dick
Imagine being a teenager and holding in your hands the deepest hopes and dreams of your fellow high school students. Imagine holding in your hands their most sensitive and eager wishes. Their thoughts and emotions and bold declarations and shy questions.
What I held in my hands at seventeen were sheets of paper.
In high school I was on the staff of the school’s literary magazine, which was called The Laureate. Any student at the high school could submit their stories, essays, poetry, photography, or art in the hopes of getting it published. The group of us who made up the staff of the magazine were also high school students. My senior year, I was the editor of the magazine.
Rise above the vulgar crowd. Buy a Laureate…
To our credit, we recognized how pretentious it sounded to call our magazine The Laureate. Our advertising slogan my senior year — advertising which consisted of hand-drawn posters and Friday morning announcements — was: “Rise above the vulgar crowd. Buy a Laureate.”
We knew it was silly and pompous, and we loved it for that reason. If you are going to be seventeen, then by god, be seventeen in all its absurd glory.
