By Ashley E. Lang
I have always loved the written word. When I was younger, weekly field trips to the library quickly became my favorite outing. I wandered through the wooden stacks that stretched towards the ceiling, immersing myself in other worlds, without really leaving the confines of my small town. I was in heaven.
As I got older, my love of reading morphed into a passion for writing. It wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I enrolled in my first journalism class, the only writing and newspaper design class my high school offered outside of a creative writing elective, and literature courses, all of which I had already taken for credit. It was this class that guided me towards my future and now has landed me as the Art Director for The Recorder.
I fell in love. Journalism became more then a hobby, it became a passion, much like reading and writing had been for so many years. While I spent months researching colleges, with dreams of moving to California or New York City and becoming a famous writer, reality soon intervened- my ultimatum, my parents-decided that I had two options. They would either buy me a car or I could choose to go out of state for college.
Looking back, sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice, since no one told me I’d be responsible for the nearly $300 dollar monthly payment after they supplied the hefty down payment. And like clock work every first week of the month I cringe as I hand over my check to a bank teller behind a sheet of glass, leaving me with nothing more than a “Have a nice day!” At the same time though, I have met some truly wonderful people, who have become some of my closest friends.
I graduated from high school in 2006 and enrolled in Manchester Community College. While most of my other friends were packing their bags and heading to Florida, or Maine, or wherever else they enrolled in, I was driving 30 minutes, four days a week, to Manchester, Connecticut, and then driving 30 minutes back home. For the first few years I felt sad watching as all my friends prepared to move into their dorms year after year, leaving with me a bitter taste of resentment that I wouldn’t experience the typical college life that they experienced. Once the glitz and glamor of their freedom wore off, I realized how lucky I was to not have to share a small cell with a stranger, or eat school food every day until weekend trips home where I would welcome the familiarity of a home cooked meal.
I attended MCC for three years, graduating with an associate’s degree in communication with a concentration in journalism. During my time there, I worked for their school newspaper, The Live Wire, as the Layout Editor. I would on occasion write book reviews, or art exhibit reviews, but my job drifted away from writer and towards designer as each year went on.
I like to think of my time there as a wonderful learning experience in terms of my design work. I learned, through trial and error, that some design layouts were better suited for the pages of magazines, then plastered across a newspaper, but I fell in love again, this time with Adobe InDesign.
I transferred to CCSU in January 2010, enrolling as a journalism major. I found that adjusting to life as a transfer student was just as hard as it was as a freshman walking the halls at MCC. I was starting over. Nobody knew me, I didn’t belong to any clubs, and once again had to prove myself to a whole new set of people. The following semester, after promising my advisor I would look into joining the newspaper on campus, I finally followed through and have never looked back. This tiny office in the student center has become my home away from home, much like The Live Wire office once was.
And here I am, Art Director for The Recorder. While most of our staff is busy writing stories, or interviewing sources, I am usually sitting in front of my computer Monday nights placing the stories that they write. Fitting all of Central’s news into 12 pages, the same 12 pages you are currently holding now. I am in charge of formatting and placing the photos, designing the layout spreads, creating house ads, and making The Recorder visually appealing.