Talk about a blast from the past.  Audrey Smilley, a band whose music I reviewed early in my college career, contacted me out of the blue last week about an upcoming reunion show. They just completed a modest Kickstarter campaign to fund the digitization and remastering of their original recordings. Hoping to get a bit of press about their reunion show, the band contacted the paper I used to write for, Student Review, who in turn contacted me for my perspective some 22 years later.

Reviewing my review, my perspective is this: I’ve come a long way as a writer. That’s to be expected. Writing for the Student Review was the first time I’d ever written for a real audience. Or at least a wider audience. Teachers, friends, girlfriends had all read my essays, letters and notes, but the Student Review published me first. (They’ve published many better writers. Trust me, I’m nothing special.)

It’s much easier to have your work widely read and viewed these days through blogging and social media, but having your work combed over by an editor ups your game exponentially. Sure people may read your work on a blog, but they’ll consume it quickly and may not even read the whole piece. Very few of those readers will comment on the quality of your work, offer suggestions for improvement, push you to write better, more effectively.

That is why if a student wants to write, or just wants to improve their writing, they should join up with their campus newspaper pronto, post haste. Working with editors and deadlines are crucial components to a writing education.

Writing for a school newspaper also provides ample opportunities for networking. You’ll meet and work with a wide variety of people on campus and in the community. My career in the radio, then record business, correlated directly to my experience with the Student Review.

It should be obvious why and how much I love my job: teaching writing and journalism to high school students. I didn’t get involved with my school paper until college, so I missed out on a few key years of writing instruction and a chance to rub shoulders with people I probably should have rubbed shoulders with.

A couple side notes:

The first tip I’d give to my younger self: use stronger verbs. It’s not until paragraphs two and three that I use verbs like yield and surface, which aren’t even all that strong. And the title is begging for a verb that would actually draw people into the review. “Audrey Smilley Reviewed”? Yeah, so what?

The first tip I’d give the band: don’t send half your members to another state to promote your music. Stuff everyone in a van and hit the road.

Yes, I reviewed a cassette tape. This was 1991 folks.