I’m not a crier.

I go out of my way to make it known that I only let the waterworks flow about three times a calendar year, even though that’s not really true.

It’s part of the armor necessary to lead an organization like The Badger Herald: to act in best interest of the organization over the individual, to be the face taking the brunt of public ridicule, to take divisive action to right a ship caught in a storm.

Farewell columns in college newspapers are generally made of mushy platitudes because the future is easy to view through rose-colored glasses. With graduation and departures nearing, reflecting on the past four years gives way to over-the-top sentimentality.

But that’s never really been my thing.

Spending my entire college career throwing all of myself into the Herald has defined my time at the University of Wisconsin — along with the thrilling highs and bottomed-out lows that come with single-minded devotion to something that’s all consuming.

So I learned early – during the second semester of my freshman year when I was hired to be campus editor (my heart had been set on city) – that a protective shell is essential for women looking to lead.

I have had plenty of opportunities to refine that protective armor. I’ve been called racist, homophobic, sexist — once earning a one-week suspension as a cub reporter when I buckled while covering an emotionally charged story. A top administrator once emailed me asking how a story printed on the Herald’s pages intersected with “the beliefs [I] espouse about women and women’s issues.” There was that time I didn’t tell my boss I had mono because I didn’t want to take time off work. I learned how hard it can be to take care of yourself, physically and mentally, in a job like this. I’ve learned to crave the heart-pumping adrenaline of breaking news, a unique high unlike any other. And, of course, when hundreds of anonymous commenters asked me how I managed to sleep at night and hurled personal attacks in the midst of a firestorm over a letter to the editor.

Despite all that, or maybe because of it, I kept coming back. It was inexplicable (particularly for my parents, who were concerned about my precarious GPA) but I was absolutely hooked. I applied for the next job and the next job and the next all the way up the ladder, and somewhere along the line I decided I wanted the top job. It’s been nothing like I imagined it would be, but has been one of the most affirming and valuable experiences of my life (no hyperbole, promise).

For me, working at the Herald has been about taking the good and the bad in stride, and using the rest of the time to do incredible independent student journalism every single day. Heralders are some of the best people I’ve had the fortune to meet on this campus, and it’s been a privilege to work alongside them.

There are so many moments that have made my time here so, so good. I’ve fostered a wonkish appreciation for government meetings (be they city or student), gone to an 8:50 a.m. class after the last night of production’s champagne night festivities still stinking and sticky with bubbly, drank a ton of shitty beer in the name of Bozo Buckets and staff bonding and learned that my ability to chug a beer in a competitive setting is unparalleled.

The Herald provided a testing ground for me to experiment, break things and fail as a journalist and an editor. Over the course of four years, I’ve grown from an uncertain, flighty freshman into someone who is decisive, self-reliant and slightly less flighty. This is the place where I’ve come of age, both personally and professionally, so it’s hard to imagine leaving — although I know, in a certain bittersweet way, that it’s time to go.

Maybe I’ll even shed a tear.

Katherine Krueger ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science.