In the last blog post, Jeenah shared her experiences and memories from starting this magazine. We thought it only appropriate if I did the same. Like we have said before in almost all the interviews that we have done, it really did begin with a text from Jeenah: “Hey Hope! I have this idea.”
When we first met over Zoom just about a year ago, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The things that may seem commonplace now, such as ‘What We Ponder’ - something I came up with while sitting on some bench on Whidbey Island after a couple of hours of agonizing over a blog title - were ideas that came to us out of nowhere. For example, the length of each magazine was decided just based off of some random googling about 20 minutes into the first call. After much debate, these first four issues were decided about an hour into that same call. Looking back, this creativity was (and still is) fun for us! We were able to do and think through aspects of writing and production that school would never delve into. I think I'll be forever grateful just to have made a website using Wix (though Jeenah did A LOT).
Jeenah and I move very quickly just as people and somehow that is expedited when we come together. I think back to a lot of those original decisions that were made in those early meetings and I am again in awe of the speed that we created ideas and implemented them. Perhaps those ideas can be attributed to our boredom due to the pandemic or that all our AP exams were over, but I would like to think that it’s because we work extremely well together.
A lot of people may look at us at the beginning and think that we were nervous and scared. However, we never had the time to feel those things. For us, we decided quite early on that if this worked, then it worked and we would keep going; if it were to fail, no one would ever need to know. Honestly, I feel a lot more fear regarding the early articles than the ones we publish now. Even if we did pretty extensive research back then, the amount of fact checking and editing we do now is almost double or triple what we used to. I have a lot of pride, not in just our content, but in the way we have grown as a team and as individuals to reach new levels of excellence.
To all the people who work with us: I want to say thank you so very much for working so hard and creating such meaningful and cool pieces. Your commitment to our mission is truly what makes this whole thing work. A BIG thank you to Jeenah for being amazing and always being on the same wavelength as me. Let’s keep going for many issues to come.
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