Last month was my four year anniversary of rejoining the Rooster Teeth site, and honestly what a crazy four years it's been. In honour of my four years here, and to make up for a lack of content in my journals, I thought I'd write a bit about why I became an RTX Guardian! Buckle in because this may get long. 

My journey with RT starts way back in middle school - I was a PlayStation kid growing up so I missed the initial Halo hype, but thanks to the magic of assigned lunchtime seating, I became friends with a kid who was absolutely obsessed with Halo. One weekend whilst hanging out with him, he showed me an episode of RvB, and the rest as they say is history. I joined the old community site, but not being a big forum kid, spent most of my time lurking, and then eventually lost access to that account. 

Fast forward to December 2012, and you'd find me moving back home halfway through my sophomore year of college having had to withdraw due to financial difficulties. Moving home when all your high school friends are away at college, and all your college friends are 400 miles away on campus is hard. Really hard. In what honestly was an absolute nightmare time for me, I turned back to one of the few things that made being back home a little brighter - RT and AH content! I joined the site in February 2013 and started getting back into the community - posting journals and even diving into the forums. When RTX 2013 was announced, I still knew almost nobody from the community, but decided to throw caution to the wind and buy a ticket for myself to go, figuring I'd either make friends along the way, or I'd never go back. 

Lucky for me, I made myself common in the RTX forum that year, and just as it happened to be, there were others looking to meet people going to RTX that year as well. One of my first close community friends was @StanLewis, the lovable goof you may know from the Gauntlet, or Fan Service, or even On the Spot. Stan created a group chat for people going to RTX both new and old, and through that group I met some really awesome people. The group, which still exists to this day, made it easy to find and connect with people from the community who wanted to make RTX the best time they could. 

At RTX that summer, we experienced our first taste of what the event was like - we met our favourite staffers, we watched AH play GTA on the center stage, and we explored downtown Austin. It was an absolute blast and I was hooked right away. I also was "lucky" enough to experience the 9 hour AH Lounge queue on Sunday waiting for signatures with loads of fellow fans. This was the key moment for me. 

Sitting on the ground anywhere is not a lot of fun, especially not at the Austin Convention Centre, and ESPECIALLY not for 9 hours. But let me tell you that that time spent there is one of my most favourite memories of the entire weekend. Why? Because of the Guardians tasked to work that line. It's hard to make sitting in one place for hours fun, but somehow they achieved the impossible. The Guardians worked hard to bring water and snacks to folks, to play games and talk with people about their favourite RT shows and moments, to swap stories of how they discovered Rooster Teeth and overall captured what I think one of the best parts of RTX is, which is coming together as a community to make new friends, create great memories, and build experiences that will stay with you forever. What actually was about 9 hours of queuing felt like nothing thanks to the Guardians who went just a little above and beyond to make connections with their fellow community members. 

In the three years I have worked as a Guardian since 2013, I have been so grateful to see many of these moments happen first hand, and it makes every second of being a Guardian worth it. To watch the joy (and sometimes tears) on people's faces when they get to tell a staff member how they've impacted their life in some way, or to see long distance internet friends meet and become best friends IRL, or even to hear stories of people finding love, makes even the longest, hottest, craziest days worth it. This year, I can wait to add even more memories and experiences to my repertoire at RTX Austin and RTX London.