Meet The Editor: On Finishing School, First Job, Childhood Dreams

CHICAGO, IL — I was sitting at my grandpa’s kitchen table, halfway across the globe from my home in Chicago, when I got the offer to join Patch’s team of wonderful, talented reporters as a field editor for some of Chicago’s western suburbs.

My whole life, my grandpa was one of the people who was a supportive proponent of me pursuing a career in writing. I used to spend the majority of my summers at my grandparents’ home in Romania, just outside of Cluj-Napoca — the country’s second-largest city. Every summer without fail, I’d sit under the grapevines in their shaded yard and write for hours about anything I could think of. My grandpa would ask almost every summer, “What do you constantly write about?”

I don’t remember how old I was, maybe around 11 or 12, but he had commented that I should become a writer since that was all I spent my summers doing (besides reading and talking with my family a lot). It’s been about a decade since he said that to me, and I wish I could share with him that my dream of writing became a reality.

I owe a lot of my life’s happenings and memories to my grandparents and those summers in Romania. They imbued in me a deep love of people, of traveling and breaking out of my comfort zone, of photography and capturing moments on film. As cliche as it is to say, I genuinely don’t know who I’d be without that time.

It led me to find an amazing job out of college, which excites me to no end.

This past May, just a few weeks ago, I graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism. Degree aside, I wouldn’t be where I am today without my time spent on Loyola’s award-winning student paper, The Phoenix. I started my freshman year as an arts and entertainment writer and worked my way up the ranks to hold roles: managing editor, section editor and copy editor.

I also consider The Phoenix partially responsible for opening many doors for me, including the opportunity to intern at the Chicago Sun-Times to write for the paper’s “Murals and Mosaics” project. Chicago is home to a plethora of vibrant, meaningful murals, and there’s no better way to commemorate them than by highlighting the artists and documenting the art.

I’m forever grateful for the late nights in that newsroom filled with laughs, coffee runs and dog cuddles. It’s The Phoenix that introduced me to my obsession with grammar and AP style — I guess I chose a good career.

I also can’t forget to mention my dearest Rosca’s Ramblings, a column I was tasked to start my sophomore year, its name perfectly suiting my personality. The column was home to a myriad of pieces, most notably a love letter to Whole Foods, a farewell piece to my AirPods and a documentation of my obsession with movie review app Letterboxd. Sprinkled into a majority of those pieces was also a mention of my favorite, Timothée Chalamet.

In college, I also minored in studio photography, and those classes were probably my favorites out of all the ones I took over the course of four years. Film photography is one of my favorite things in this life and having been able to learn darkroom techniques in college was pretty amazing, to say the least.

I could talk a lot about this topic, but I’ll move on after shouting out Central Camera Company, my favorite place in the city, whose employees never fail to make me laugh or teach me new things about photography every time I set foot into the 122-year-old store.

There are defining moments in life that seem to shape our personalities more than others, and some of the tidbits I’ve shared in this column are just a few of them. As a reporter at Patch, I’m excited to engage with you, the community, and share the most important news in each village. Hyperlocal news is as important as ever, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to report on everything happening.

My inbox is always open. If you have any story ideas — local oddities, exciting openings, curiosities requiring investigation, cool photos — I’m all ears. Or if you’d just like to say hi and chat about art or the community, my email is emily.rosca@patch.com.