I’ve done a lot at the Iowa State Daily, and from day one I said, over and over, I wasn’t a journalist.

I was a copy editor, correcting others’ work; a section editor, helping others create work; print editor, making the design and content a finished newspaper each day. This past summer, I was even editor in chief.

As editor in chief, I was also acting news editor and a news reporter. My first major assignment: the renaming of the Black Cultural Center after George A. Jackson, a former administrator. I pulled up one misty morning to the house on Welch Avenue, a plastic bag wrapped around the camera I had found in the office. I knew how to turn it on — past that, any photo was 90 percent luck.

I opened the modest screen door. What I was not expecting was Tom Hill, a former Iowa State administrator, standing at the door greeting people, or Interim President Benjamin Allen sitting next to Jackson’s family members. Reginald Stewart, vice president for diversity and inclusion, and Kenyatta Shamburger, director of the office of multicultural student affairs, mingled with alumni.

These were high stakes. A journalist would be intrigued. I was not intrigued.

I left that day with photos, a story, a video and the complete and utter certainty that I was not a journalist.