By Leah Bayley-Hay
Editor-in-Chief

I came to college with my heart set on one day being a glamourous fashion magazine editor. It’s a dreamy goal that steadily grew the more I watched Rom Coms with cliché-yet-loveable plot lines – a struggling New York City journalist who ends up triumphing in their career and love life by the end of the movie.  

Little did I know entering Stevenson that the size of my love for Rom Coms would soon be matched by my new love for journalism.  

I’ve always had a niche for writing, but I found something special inside the world of editing. Being one of the final steps in helping to produce something great proved incredibly rewarding.  

After moving on from Long Reach High School’s newspaper staff, I quickly started to embed myself in the writing scene at Stevenson. Working on The Greenspring Review staff since my first semester, I moved from an Assistant Poetry Editor to now holding the title of Managing Editor (Poetry Section Editor and Associate Editor being other positions I held in that progression).  

Fall semester of 2021, I started my third semester working on The Villager but my first semester as an editor for the paper. The paper was in a transition period with a new staff and a new advisor – an almost clean slate for The Villager – and I took on the challenge of stepping up as Editor-in-Chief.  

Since then, I have grown to love journalism deeply. It has become a passion, especially with The Villager, which has started to feel like a second home. The unique thing about The Villager is that we are small in numbers but extraordinarily committed to providing fresh and captivating stories to the Stevenson community. Our staff strives to be a trustworthy source of information for our audience.  

The Villager places heavy value on completing our work efficiently and ethically. Our reporters take the time to conduct interviews and to go out and find hard-to-reach information, so our readers don’t have to.  

Inside the newsroom this semester, I’ve made it a priority to maximize our staff’s potential and deliver frequent content that SU wants or needs to hear. I want The Villager to be an accurate reflection of all demographics at Stevenson.  

The most important point I want to emphasize heading into this semester is that we are a media outlet that is run for students, by students, which means The Villager wants to hear from its student body.  

Story ideas can be submitted to The Villager for consideration by emailing [email protected] or [email protected]  

I look forward to working on The Villager staff and serving the Stevenson community for another fulfilling semester!