Damn, we are some lucky people.
There was a brief moment this quarter when I was walking from the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden toward Kerckhoff Hall and everything got quiet and the sunlight was slanted a particular way and the breeze and, I don’t know, but the combination of everything seemed perfect. I experienced something I can only describe as “the feels.”
I think this moment was somehow poignant because lately I’ve felt a senior-year cynicism seeping into my attitude, preventing me from realizing how incredibly in love I am with this place.
This is where the Daily Bruin usually comes in to remind me. I’m completely smitten with the idea that the physical paper is a mirror of the physical campus on any given day.
That a group of students converge in an intimate space to create a package that narrates the story of a small community on a daily basis, and the fact that this tangible package is only available on campus seems worth protecting as a particularly special way of preserving a place.
I think the staffers at the Daily Bruin understand this sense of place.
The walls of Kerckhoff 118 partition the office into honeycomb-like pockets of workspace, dividing each section of the newspaper – from the copy editors to the opinion columnists – into nooks of productivity.
Stacks of discarded reporters’ notebooks create piles in the crannies of desks and scribbled-on pieces of paper litter the shelves in every corner. The surfaces of the walls are plastered with “wall quotes” – typed transcriptions recording humorous tidbits of overheard conversations between staffers.
Even the ceiling supports a collection of front pages pinned up as a canopy above the heights of outdated computers and camera equipment.
This windowless office represents a place constructed through the paper trail of our storytelling.
More importantly, it has provided me with a place to make connections with some very special people.
Ramsey and Loic, I think I’m going to coin the term “collegiate soulmates” to describe you punks. I hope to be brewing beer and “Wagon Wheel”-ing with you for a long time to come.
Emma, thank you for redefining the English language with me (i.e. “tro”) and Liz, your scream-laugh is undeniably infectious, so thank you.
Alexa and Erika, I wouldn’t have wanted to work with anyone else this year. Thank you for making prime magazine everything I wanted it to be.
This last column is only a shy gesture of what my experience working for the paper has meant to me. If nothing more, the Daily Bruin has taught me that you just have to keep making things and treating people well.
This paper and this university have humbled me and for that I’m grateful.
Cody was prime magazine director from 2012-2013, assistant opinion editor from 2011-2012 and a columnist from 2010-2011.