How Did the Highlander Start?

In January 2021, Sona Gevorgyan and Anna Andreasyan, EC seniors, launched an online magazine for AUA students, called The Highlander. The platform allows students to freely express their thoughts, talk about their student life and experiences, as well as address issues present in the community and relevant political and non-political topics from around the world. 

Sona and Anna came up with this idea during the COVID-19 pandemic and thought it would bring AUA students together and connect them again. They both have known each other since their first year at AUA and their friendship became the base of the magazine.

“We have similar thoughts, we have similar ideas, we share the same mindset and we love working together,” Sona said. Sona and Anna want to create a legacy by keeping the independent voice of the students, giving the community freedom to be vocal about the issues they see, and being the medium of opportunity for students to discover themselves.

The online magazine is not only for reports and articles but also for creative works. They tried integrating people from every layer of the AUA community. “We have a comic section, where one of our EC students designs comics,” Sona said. “Our AUA fiction club is also collaborating with us.” 

According to Anna, The Highlander is a great way of knowing the AUA students’ perspectives and insights on so many issues. She also considers this to be an online archive of students’ lives.

Besides the fact that the magazine gives opportunities to the students to share their concerns and interests with their peers, there is a specific order for choosing which topics the reporters should work on. First of all, the reporters discuss their ideas with the Co-Editors-in-Chief and start working on them after getting their approval. “…In terms of ideas, we are very open,” Anna mentioned. 

Arpine Ghambaryan, an EC senior student who is also a reporter for The Highlander, describes her experience of working with the big team of the student magazine as a way of constantly learning from her job and from her best friends, who are her co-workers in the magazine now.

On this tiresome and, at the same time, exciting journey, Anna and Sona are grateful for the support and appreciation from their friends and instructors. The magazine includes students from all different AUA majors and years. 

“This is something very close to our hearts,” admitted Sona. The-Co-Editors-Chief both dream that this project will have a legacy. “We want other AUA students to continue working on this,” admitted Anna.

It all comes down to one thing; friendship in this project never became an obstacle to learning from one another and working together side by side. They created an environment that linked all of the layers of a community together.