Being Editor-in-Chief of a school newspaper comes with a lot of responsibility, long evenings and stress levels accelerating quickly to heart attack level on deadline. However, whether you are Type A or not, being Editor-in-Chief prepares you for the world and for all the stressful situations that come with it. But, even though the hours are hard, you were not paid and sometimes it is you, not your school, who is your harshest critic; at the end of each issue cycle, it is the memories and camaraderie with your staff to make a tangible product that always reminds you why you chose your job. These are the 13 lessons you can learn from being Editor-in-Chief of your high school paper:

1. How to manage at least five different social media accounts at once.

Whether your newspaper is print or online, you realized that having a massive social media presence is crucial. And that’s where the fun came in – Gmail, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Usernames are simple, but passwords are where your true self-expression and inside jokes come out. As you disclose the beautiful password to members of your staff, you always have to preface it by saying “Don’t judge”. Once you finally log in, managing the account is a big responsibility and you use it with the utmost integrity and devotion, and a whole lot of paper promotion.

2. How to manage a staff that consisted of students in all grade levels.

J-love all around. Your staff is like a rock – all 75 of them. They keep you sane, or make you go insane depending on how the paper looked before deadline. But, you quickly learn that if you listen, respect their ideas and work patiently with them, they will have your back and contribute amazing and innovative things that made the paper the best it could be. You wouldn’t trade them for anything, not even for a life time subscription to InDesign (Yes, it made my Christmas list almost every year).

3. National journalism conventions are awesome.

Journalism Convention season is the best season ever. After planning an itinerary, working out financial costs with the school finance office, getting parent chaperones, and booking the hotel, watching an event that you anticipated and planned finally executed makes all the long hours of planning worth it. And, once the first day of Convention finally arrives, walking into the convention center with your staff aka squad - newspapers in one hand and a large Starbucks Frappuccino in another is a feeling like no other. After three days of speakers, lessons and competitions and two fun filled staff bonding nights, you can easily say that you came, you saw, and you conquered.

4. How to collaborate with your Co-Editor.

Partners in crime, literally. You two are each other’s lives because you spend 24/7 with them planning out how the paper will look, what articles will be published and what classes will be assigned certain articles and pages. Compromising, communication, respect and equal partnership are extremely important qualities needed in getting along with and working with another person – making you two a golden pair. And, you also learn that not even the weekends can keep you and your co-Editor from always talking about journalism.

5. InDesign is both a blessing and a curse.

It is inevitable that not a single page of your paper can be designed without InDesign, and, either you love it and try to teach the new reporters around you or you have that prodigy graphic designer to do all the work and you okay it for print. Either way, InDesign is a skill that takes forever to learn, but once understood, you feel like a professional magazine designer as you converted those miraculous squares into creative pages for your paper.

6. It's either PSD or go home.

If someone made a picture a jpg instead of a PSD, the paper was done. PSD is always the way to go. End of story.

7. Organization is the key to success.

Folders. Folders are everywhere. In the classroom, on the desktop, and in that corner of no return in your bedroom. Excel documents contained the categories: “list of stories”, “section”, “writers”, “title”, “graphics?”, “graphics by”, “due date” and “edited”. Sound like a lot of categories? Yes, it was the newspaper bible for that issue. And google docs takes a close second for connecting with your editors and keeping track of the changes and updates they added about their section pages.

Also, pictures from photographers have to be organized into sections and if any of those pictures are deleted before deadline and are being used on a page, there is massive trouble waiting for you. It is then that you always question why “Picture Organizer” was never added to the staff list.

8. Copy Edit quickly and accurately.

Commas, commas, everywhere. Whether it is editing articles or printing out the entire newspaper and editing it all page by page, too much white space by too much white space, and comma by comma, there is nothing more satisfying than perfecting work and completing that final step before submission.

9. Great Editor Meetings are the key to a great end product.

You love editor meetings. It is a time when you get to meet with the other members of your staff and hear their opinions about how the next issue of the paper should be done. You have that itinerary all ready to go each meeting, but you soon learn that the best way to say what you need to say while at the same time finding out what your editors have to say is by letting the meeting run its course and to not be too wedded to the schedule order as long as you hit everything on the agenda.

10. The best story ideas come when you aren't expecting them.

You learn that there is always a story no matter where you go at school, so you keep a running list of stories in the notes section on your phone. As a result during story meetings you always are prepared and ready to go - or at least you try to be.

Story meetings are always your favorite part, okay one of your many favorite parts of being on the staff. They usually consist of someone writing all the stories in small print on a white board, while someone else types them down feverishly on the handy dandy google doc, while everyone else goes crazy on tangent supplemental stories to provide entertainment. However, these crazy stories spark ideas for other stories, and that's how great stories are born.

11. "Hard Deadline" actually means what it says.

You learned through your years of journalism that deadlines are the most important part of your job. But, once you become Editor-in-Chief, you fully appreciate how much effort EICs before you had put in to get the paper out on time. When you are on deadline and the pressure is on, you are not above calling reporter’s homes when they don't turn in their assignment, shamelessly ordering the unhealthiest take-out food possible, and staying till 11 pm and risking getting locked into the school for the sake of making deadline. And, no matter how stressed or emotional you feel, you learn that the best way to get a paper out quickly, effectively and efficiently is to keep your cool and remain optimistic. Positive thinking gives you a goal that you want to attain and makes you more determined to put out a good paper.

12. Nothing beats seeing people reading the paper once it comes out.

The looks on peoples' faces and the mere act of someone picking up the paper and flipping through it makes everything that you and your staff have done worth all the stress.

13. And, no matter what, you wouldn’t trade your time being Editor-in-Chief of your high school paper for anything.

Being EIC was my favorite high school memory by far!