The hardest part of writing is deciding when to stop.
It doesn’t matter where you start, as you can later retain
or discard any of your first words, phrases or even numerous pages.
But arriving at a point where you can say, “That’s it,
I’m done,” is, to me, perhaps the most difficult part
of the process.
It’s not just finding the perfect ending (or even a
moderately satisfactory one) that’s the toughest element.
Rather, good writing relies heavily on rereading and editing until
you reach a place where you can turn it in or see it published.
On the Daily Bruin copy desk ““ where I’ve spent the
majority of my hours at The Bruin ““ the term for this
existential place of conclusion is “approved copy.”
But approved doesn’t mean perfect, and while the published
product is often impressive, it is still a rough draft.
Though at least four or five pairs of eyes read everything that
appears in The Bruin prior to publication, I still pick up the
paper and read it with pen in hand, marking up mistakes or
instances where I disagree with editing choices. I even disagree
with some of my own decisions when I see them the next day.
Perhaps the paper would look more pristine if we had a week to
work on it. Maybe everything would be perfect if we were a monthly.
But if that were the case, we wouldn’t be as effective or as
efficient, and we definitely wouldn’t be the Daily Bruin.
Being a daily doesn’t come from having a name and printing
schedule that demands you publish every day; it comes from the
staff’s consistent hard work, passion and dedication. The
hundreds of Daily Bruin staff members I’ve had the privilege
of working with in the past four years have inspired me more than
any news event or any finished product.
Out of necessity to maintain sanity and inspire progress, we
can’t dwell on past mistakes or successes. We can’t
plan every detail ahead of time because, well, news just
happens.
Our best planning and preparation for tomorrow’s paper is
what we’ve done before today: the tough calls we’ve
already answered and the stories we’ve already completed,
even if they stand theoretically unfinished, both in print and on
the Internet.
While coming to completion points can be nebulous, Bruin
staffers are aided by daily deadlines, newsworthiness and editors
who enforce those deadlines.
But deciding when your own career at The Bruin should end is
even more undefined, ungoverned. Even though graduation forces many
of us out of Kerckhoff 118, the departure is bittersweet.
I’ve had a taste of it already.
I left The Bruin a few weeks early to train in Philadelphia for
an internship at The Washington Post, and though I was relieved to
be done with The Bruin, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Every day of our training, we were allotted 30 minutes to read
“our paper” online. Internet time was a precious and
scarce commodity ““ it was like living through 1997 again.
I did enjoy reading The Post, but whenever my professor
wasn’t looking and I felt daring enough, I would move my
cursor and type in a different, unapproved address:
dailybruin.com. Because when I think about “my
paper,” I instinctually turn to The Bruin.
The Bruin will always be my paper. I’ll always feel proud
when we write a phenomenal story or scoop the Los Angeles Times.
And I’ll still cringe and feel genuinely embarrassed when we
mess up, even if it’s only a misplaced comma.
All of us, those departing and remaining, are part of what The
Bruin is and continues to be. Predictably, future staffers will sit
on the news couch, thumbing through the bound archives to see how
we covered the cadaver scandal or coach Lavin’s firing. They
will no doubt compare any future student government elections to
the elections we’ve covered.
Our dedication and final product set the groundwork for them,
and provide a rough draft for others to polish by adding more
layers to the Daily Bruin’s narrative of UCLA history.
In the past four years, I’ve gone from being called
“Copy Girl” by an editor in chief who didn’t even
know my name to leading that section, and then overseeing all of
daily production. Part of me still doesn’t feel
“done,” even after all those years of enforcing
deadlines and straining to meet them ““ or missing them by
minutes or hours.
We each leave The Bruin similar to the stories and pages
we’ve created ““ a little unfinished and constantly
preparing for the next day’s product. We may not feel ready,
and may have very little planned for the next chapters in our
lives, but if The Bruin has taught us anything, it’s that we
can succeed in any capacity if we have passion, work harder than we
ever thought possible, and surround ourselves with inspirational
colleagues.
Throughout her four years at The Bruin, Bonos served as
managing editor, copy chief, dating columnist and resident punner.
She plans to pursue a career in journalism.