I have worked for The Middlebury Campus since the second week of my freshman year, primarily as an Opinions Editor. When I assumed the role of Editor at Large this year (a wonderfully vague title), I was granted almost total discretion over my writing. Soon into the fall semester, I decided to start an opinion column, Sarah Says, to make use of the ideas I’d been jotting down in my notes app.
Assuming the role of a columnist, particularly on a small, liberal arts campus, is a uniquely revealing experience. By drawing on personal experience, the columnist opens their work to public dialogue. When their work relies on the material of their life, this quickly means their life becomes subject to discourse, too.
I waded into vulnerability like a child faced with a cold pool. First, I penned a defense of the English department, then, a manifesto for the writing life and a reflection on my (literally) traumatic semester abroad. Each piece pushed me further into the pool until what emerged was my op-ed reflecting on the romantic loneliness and shame I felt at not having a boyfriend in college.
The romantic article was different for me because it poked at a current hurt — a hurt I was embarrassed to admit mattered so much in an otherwise successful social and academic college career. Before I published the article, I showed it to one of my closest friends; she said it would be her nightmare to publish something so revealing. But I asked her: Is it good?
When I decided to take up writing as a vocation, I decided at the same time to give it my all: as much time, diligence and vulnerability as I was capable. Writers that are unwilling to plumb their own soul are unlikely to move their readers.
So, I published the piece. I was worried that my vulnerability might seem too gratuitous, but it was the piece’s vulnerability that resonated. People started to come out of the woodwork. They would email me, DM me and approach me, sometimes at parties, to tell me what my work meant to them.
I cannot overstate this gift. To know anyone was impacted by my writing is an honor I will remember as I move into the next phase of my life. It’s easy as a writer to get caught up in ego. I am tortured by every sentence, the gap between the immense feeling inside of me and our inadequate human tools of communication. Writing is by definition a solitary practice and, often, a lonely one. Again and again this column helped remind me that, despite my writer’s ego, I write to reach other people. Through writing, both the writer and the reader hope to be seen.
My columns became bolder. I opined on SSRIs, the literary canon, body image and porn. (Note: before you write on porn, someone should tell you your small liberal arts campus will never let you forget it).
I made the Midd alumni email blast. A classmate told me her house wanted to know if I had done a project in the nude or if I was being hyperbolic. (As a general rule, I do not believe in the artistic merits of hyperbole). And, when the premier Middlebury meme account used my column in a meme, I knew I’d made it.
Recently, a student approached me and told me he appreciated my recent op-ed — which focused on the relationship between social media and campus discourse — because it was serious. The obvious implication in his back-handed compliment was that my other columns were unserious. To further clarify, this student explained that, unlike the previous editions of my column, this one did not make him “laugh out loud.”
I walked away from this student fuming, mostly because his remarks, so off the cuff, caused me to doubt myself. Yet, as I gradually cooled down, I reflected that this too is one of the benefits of the columnist. People might love your work or despise it, but by virtue of putting your name in print you open yourself to criticism as well as compliments.
Especially on a small liberal arts campus where the criticism can come when you’re minding your business in Atwater, this aspect of writing can feel deeply invasive.
Naturally, I am a thin-skinned person. Writers, however, must acquire thicker skin. With each layer of my life that I offered up for appraisal, and sometimes disapproval, I started to build that tougher skin. If there is any truism applicable to a writer’s path, it is that one should expect rejection.
Though I happened to disagree with this student, when writing is published it ceases to belong to the author and enters the collective consciousness. In this column I tried to address issues that I see as relevant across the gender spectrum, and my column is grounded in a woman’s lens, and I primarily opine on issues which affect women. I do not see these issues as unserious.
In just over two weeks, I will graduate, barring any surprises, without a job or much of a plan. The very precariousness that hangs over my future writing allows me to treasure this forum, the student paper, as a true gift. I don’t know where I’m going next, but it is a life with the pursuit of writing at its very center, in no small part due to my time on The Campus and my time writing for every one of you.
Thanks for reading.
Sarah Miller '24 (she/her) is an Editor at Large.
She previously served as Opinions Editor and Staff Writer. Miller is an English major on the Creative Writing track. She hails from Philadelphia and spent the spring studying English at Trinity College Dublin. She has interned for The New England Review and hosts a WRMC radio show where you can still listen to her many opinions.
