The Miami Student is more than a club — it shaped the person I am today

In the warm fall of 2020, I stumbled my way to Miami University, green behind the ears, eager to get away from home and terrified of where I was going.

I started out that year as a political science major. I had no roommate. My dorm hall was at about a quarter capacity, and I didn’t like my friends much. Over the course of my next three years at Miami, I learned what I wanted to do with my life, let alone what I wanted to major in. I finally found friends I want to keep forever, let alone friends good enough to keep close until things got dry.

I learned these things because when I needed community, friendship and work to do, I found The Miami Student.

I remember my first meeting with The Student. I went to a Campus and Community section Zoom call, brought not a single unique idea and left anxious and confused about what I should do.

I bounced around trying to figure out what I wanted to do and remembered that, as a pretentious and generally aggravated New Yorker, I should write for Opinion.

And so I did.

I learned that airing my grievances in print — whether that meant complaining about the steamed bagels at Bagel & Deli or yelling at the administration over whatever bothered me that week — gave me a chance to improve my writing. It gave me a chance to improve my thinking, too.

However, I never found myself caring so much about that. In my sophomore year, I was so ready to get out of Oxford that I started looking at how to transfer to a school in New York. Any school in New York. I missed the security of my family and the not-so-friendly confines of the New York City metropolitan area.

I was asked to be the assistant Opinion editor, and I almost turned it down because I wasn’t sure if I would be back at Miami that fall. By only the good graces of the whatever high atop the thing, I chickened out and stayed at school, thereby requiring myself to assistant edit whatever I needed to.

I still wasn’t happy with what life I’d gathered at Miami.

Then, something strange happened. The seniors graduated. I got to take over and run the Opinion section. I started to get closer to the other editors who were rising seniors, and for a brief moment, I saw a flicker of hope inside an otherwise damp and dark soul.

For my last column with The Student, I wrote, “In these past four years, only one has truly been the best of my life.”

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In that last year, I took the helm of the Opinion section, solidified my desire to pursue journalism and made friends at The Student. They remain some of my best friends today.

For me, it wasn’t as simple as joining The Miami Student. I needed to stick with it and realize that it offered much more than a chance to grovel over minutiae in print. It gave me a community, friends and a chance to hone my skills in a way I couldn’t have anticipated if someone slapped this column across my face six-and-a-half years ago.

The Miami Student stands for me not just as a student organization that helped me become a professional journalist in Colorado — it remains the newspaper that tested me and made me prove that I can be a whole person, happy with myself and those around me.

It’s an experience I could never forget, and what I gained from it drives me to keep doing better every day.

After graduating from Miami University in 2024, Abi Ankenky began working at the Longmont Times-Call in Longmont, Colorado as a breaking news reporter.