As I stare at this unwritten article, I wonder what to write. Do I say something profound in honor of this being my last *official* BALM piece? Do I choose to be witty and cunning, giving readers a cool persona to remember me by? Whatever I decide to do, it won’t change the reality that this is my goodbye to BALM. My goodbye to a family I’ve come to know and love, even though we don’t share an ounce of blood. My goodbye to seeing the encouraging comments Mr. Ejzak leaves at the end of every article he edits, even after he tells me to stop using comma splices for the 100th time. And my goodbye to the daily check-ins of meetings and discussing the theme of the upcoming issue.
When I first applied to BALM all those years ago, I remember feeling extremely nervous. In fact, I can still recall padding at the seams of my chair cushion, hoping that the light of my bedroom would make me look professional on Google Meets. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself not to worry about a thing because she was about to make one of the best decisions of her life. By joining BALM, I found a community that keeps on giving, from new friends to expert writing advice. This club paved the way for great experiences. With the support of this team, or rather, this family, I found an identity within myself as a girl who loves writing and thrives from the support of her relationships. For this and many other reasons, I will be eternally grateful for my time here. Even when I was staying up super late uploading articles to the website or trying to figure out what topic to write about for the next issue, I loved being able to be a part of the BALM.
Whenever a new BALM issue dropped, I loved being able to go to the site and see the fruits of our labor. Even as a senior, I still get excited to see the ticks in the viewer count every few days, feeling giddy at the thought of people seeing and enjoying our content. To identify a singular moment on the BALM as my favorite would be a gross understatement; however, there’s nothing like the planning and execution of a holiday issue. From the glee of choosing the website theme for Halloween (the scooby doo logo is still iconic months later) or reading all of the festive Christmas articles and preparing my argument that, contrary to your top 5 Christmas shows or movies list, The Spongebob Christmas episode is the best-themed media to date, the holidays are made better with BALM. Of course, I am partially biased in this thinking; after all, my first published piece (and one of my most popular pieces) was a Christmas article. Nonetheless, I love the holidays even more when my BALM team is there with me.
While I, unfortunately, haven’t been able to write nearly as many articles as I would like for the BALM, writing each and every one of them has been a joy. As I close this article, I contemplate how nice it would be to end it with a quote from one of my older pieces. However, as a primary media review writer, few things about the greatness of a show could encompass the finality of my BALM career. But I leave readers with my favorite line from a recent article of mine, ushering in a new era while welcoming the old, immortalizing my time on BALM with immortal creatures:
“Until one night, their feelings spill over in an event that ends with two dead priests, a vampiric reveal, a kiss, and a supernatural call for eternity.”
When I first applied to BALM all those years ago, I remember feeling extremely nervous. In fact, I can still recall padding at the seams of my chair cushion, hoping that the light of my bedroom would make me look professional on Google Meets. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself not to worry about a thing because she was about to make one of the best decisions of her life. By joining BALM, I found a community that keeps on giving, from new friends to expert writing advice. This club paved the way for great experiences. With the support of this team, or rather, this family, I found an identity within myself as a girl who loves writing and thrives from the support of her relationships. For this and many other reasons, I will be eternally grateful for my time here. Even when I was staying up super late uploading articles to the website or trying to figure out what topic to write about for the next issue, I loved being able to be a part of the BALM.
Whenever a new BALM issue dropped, I loved being able to go to the site and see the fruits of our labor. Even as a senior, I still get excited to see the ticks in the viewer count every few days, feeling giddy at the thought of people seeing and enjoying our content. To identify a singular moment on the BALM as my favorite would be a gross understatement; however, there’s nothing like the planning and execution of a holiday issue. From the glee of choosing the website theme for Halloween (the scooby doo logo is still iconic months later) or reading all of the festive Christmas articles and preparing my argument that, contrary to your top 5 Christmas shows or movies list, The Spongebob Christmas episode is the best-themed media to date, the holidays are made better with BALM. Of course, I am partially biased in this thinking; after all, my first published piece (and one of my most popular pieces) was a Christmas article. Nonetheless, I love the holidays even more when my BALM team is there with me.
While I, unfortunately, haven’t been able to write nearly as many articles as I would like for the BALM, writing each and every one of them has been a joy. As I close this article, I contemplate how nice it would be to end it with a quote from one of my older pieces. However, as a primary media review writer, few things about the greatness of a show could encompass the finality of my BALM career. But I leave readers with my favorite line from a recent article of mine, ushering in a new era while welcoming the old, immortalizing my time on BALM with immortal creatures:
“Until one night, their feelings spill over in an event that ends with two dead priests, a vampiric reveal, a kiss, and a supernatural call for eternity.”
