By Ellen Garnett
Staff Writer

It’s 1 a.m. and there are spurts of furious typing in the Voice newsroom. The AP Style handbook is missing, someone lost a shoe, and there is the faint smell of cheese, but nobody knows where it is coming from. If production night strikes again at The Simmons Voice, who you gonna call?

Sarah Kinney!

For Kinney, this past Tuesday was her last production night as the Editor-in-Chief of The Simmons Voice, as she is graduating at the end of the Fall semester. Kinney has worked on the Voice for the past four years, starting off as a staff writer and ultimately making her way up to news editor, managing editor and the editor-in-chief.

“I have always loved, and been good at, writing,” said Kinney. “In elementary school, my mom had to send me to school with an extra notebook because I kept writing stories in my class notebooks during recess.”

While Kinney is an eloquent writer, she concedes that she still struggles in the face-to-face of being a journalist, but that being on the Voice has helped her with that.

“I wouldn’t be where I am, or who I am, without my time at Simmons and with the Voice. And I wouldn’t change that for the world,” said Kinney.

Kinney reflected on the numerous benefits of being part of the Voice.

“One of the best things about being on the Voice in general is having a reason to go to the most  random and interesting events,” said Kinney.

“I’ve had incredible experiences going to talks from Warburg lectures to seeing Malala Yousafazi at Harvard. I went to the How Women Become Political and I was invited to cover an Albert Schweitzer healthcare conference where the Surgeon General spoke. I interviewed President Drinan as a sophomore.”

Throughout Kinney’s many years as a writer, writing for the Voice offered her unique opportunities for growth that she might not have had otherwise, not to mention the satisfaction that comes with having her name appear on front-page, above-the-fold bylines time and time again.

As the semester is coming to an end and Kinney begins to see her future more fully, she is applying for communications and media-related jobs. Her main goal is to become a “plain ol’ journalist” when she graduates, but that is not the only job she has her eye on. One day, she hopes to be an editor of a publication or open her own communications consulting agency, although she has not yet ruled out being an English teacher, firefighter, librarian, or innkeeper.

For us at the Voice, Kinney has had many hats: Editor-in-Chief, therapist, mother, joke enthusiast, but most of all, best friend. If there is an editorial that needs to be written, Kinney is on it. InDesign acting funky? Kinney knows what to do. Got bad grammar? Kinney can help with that too.

She offers so many skills and so much passion, and that is why she will be greatly missed in the newsroom.

As Kinney prepares to graduate in the next couple of weeks, she leaves her staff and fellow Simmons students with a few bytes of inspiration: “To quote Marc Anthony, ‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.’ Sure, staying up until 1 a.m. in the newsroom on Tuesday nights sounds terrible, but I really looked forward to them,” said Kinney.

“Also, surround yourself with good people. The Voice staff members are some of my best friends. And don’t be afraid to do something just because someone tries to tell you it’s obsolete, going to make you poor, or unimportant. If it is important to you, it’s important.”