Letter from the Editor

I cried on the last day of 3rd grade. Not tears of joy for school being done and the long-awaited summer vacation beginning, but because school was done. I distinctly remember holding onto my teacher, Mrs. Desimone, sobbing. Sobbing. To the point where my mom had to convince me to leave.

Needless to say, I’ve always been an academic at heart.

So, if I cried on the last day of 3rd grade, you can imagine what my last semester of college was like. I was a top-notch mess, firmly at the “crying into my dirty darkroom apron” level. But, even if I wasn’t the kid that always dreaded the last day of school, I’m sure I would have felt the same way. After all, over 80% of my life was centered on school (and that might as well bump up to 100% since I don’t really remember my life before the age of four).

All I knew was being a student, which is why my college graduation made me feel like I was standing at the precipice of an abyss. I’d spent years working toward becoming a photographer, but how does that happen outside of a classroom? What happens when you’re out there?

The beauty of learning is that the classroom isn’t necessary. Yes, I absolutely learned things in college that I wouldn’t have learned on my own. But, I’ve also learned a lot outside of academia.

I started teaching alternative process workshops at Photographer’s Formulary in 2017, the same year I graduated. Granted, I started out as a teaching assistant, but y’all. Educators and instructors can confirm that being the one in charge is a totally different game.

For one, the workshops are packed into 5-day segments. You don’t have a semester to cover as many details as possible, you just have to rip the whole thing off like a bandaid. I’m also usually the youngest person in the room, which was an adjustment. How exactly do you assert authority when you’re the youngest person in the room? What do you do when your students have more experience in the field than you've had years on earth?

Running a magazine has come with more than its fair share of an education. But every bit of it has been so important— running a business, asserting authority, learning the inner workings of publishing, even just saying what you mean in an email.

Throughout 2020, we’ve had a fair share of unconventional education. From distance learning to educating ourselves on how deepseated racism is in the United States, we’ve all become students. Learning is not limited to four walls or that 80% of your early life. We can learn anything anywhere.

One of my first experiences at MSU was a field geology class out in Yellowstone in 2013. Do I remember the chemical makeup of the Paint Pots or which rocks are from the Precambrian Era? No (but sometimes I wish I did), but I remember how magical it felt to learn in the field. The hands-on, “hike while you take notes” learning. That’s what drew me into alt process— the byproduct of your learning isn’t necessarily theorems and abstracts; it’s a physical, real thing that you were part of from start to finish (this is also why algebra was never my subject).

Learning can come from a podcast, a conversation, a boulder in a glacial field in Yellowstone. You are never too young or too old to learn something new. You can learn in a 200-person lecture hall, and you can learn out in the backcountry. There is no wrong way to be a student, no one way to teach— you just have to be present.