A list of words and phrases the Daily Bruin ruined for me, forever: “Oxford comma,” “slack,” “centered around” and “unique.”
Before I joined The Bruin my freshman year, I was a staunch Oxford comma supporter. I’m surprised I even got in, considering I definitely used the extra pop of punctuation throughout my application to the Arts & Entertainment section – an application I flagged the second I touched down at zero week’s Enormous Activities Fair.
When I arrived here, I was afraid to drown myself in extracurriculars. Though UCLA was my first choice in the college applications process, my admission from the waitlist made me feel like I was UCLA’s second choice, and I worried I wasn’t cut out for the competitive academic atmosphere and involvement-Olympics so prevalent on this campus.
Take it slow, I told myself. Join one enormous activity. The choice was a no-brainer. I was extremely involved in my high school newspaper, and I was ready to take my journalism experience to the next level: Daily Bruin. Little did I know just how much of a level up The Bruin would be.
The no-Oxford-commas rule was only the first of many lifestyle changes necessary to work on the paper. OK, “lifestyle” may be a little dramatic, but anyone who’s ever written any sort of assignment knows how personal criticism and change can feel in the moment. That feeling is the reason I nearly cried when a draft for my first Bruin assignment came back to me as one giant, bolded block, rife with dozens of edits.
I would guess that almost every Bruin staffer in the A&E section knows that feeling of embarrassment and shame. The reason we receive so much criticism is because all of our editors care immensely about us, our section and the paper. To all the editors who bolded ruthlessly and axed my Oxford commas during my first year in A&E – Gail Acosta, Will Thorne, Shreya Aiyar and Lindsay Weinberg – thank you for taking the time. Thank you for making me a better writer. Thank you for caring.
Apart from the bolded messages, more conversations about edits took place, of course, on Slack – The Bruin’s official communication network. “Slacking” doesn’t mean slowing down or relaxing to me anymore, and it never will again. Slack is where we editors scheduled every meeting and photo shoot, assigned each story and panicked when any or all of our content for the week inevitably fell through. Slack was the root of all my second-year nightmares.
But Slack was also where we exchanged funny quotes from sources and reassured each other that tomorrow would be a better day. It’s where I joined UCLA’s most legendary intramural softball team – Soft Balls, Hard News. It’s where I received an invitation to my very first college party – and anyone who knows me knows how humiliatingly on-brand that is for me. It’s where I scored free tickets to Harry Styles’ inaugural solo tour. In short, Slack was also the launch-point for many of my favorite memories at the paper, most of which centered on my year as an assistant editor.
Notice how I said, “centered on” and not “centered around.” This one’s for you, Emily McCormick and Nate Nickolai, my fellow 2016-2017 assistant A&E editors and grammatical sticklers who are the reasons I cringe – and smile a little – every time I hear or read that darned phrase. Emily, I will never understand how you magically convinced writers to pick up all of your weekly assignments, but I never doubted your impeccable writing and soothing kindness would catapult you to superstardom. Yahoo News is so lucky to have you. And Nate, thank you for being by my side through it all since the very beginning – I can’t wait to see you kill it at Variety. Four years later, The Bruin has still never seen a more iconic duo.
If I ended this column by claiming my time at The Bruin was unique, it wouldn’t survive the first round of A&E edits. “Aren’t everyone’s experiences unique? Use a more specific word.” My time at The Bruin was challenging, exciting, exhausting, rewarding and formative beyond measure. The proof is in any assignment, journalistic, academic or otherwise, I’ve written in the past four years – plenty of en dashes and not a single Oxford comma.
Carras was an A&E senior staff writer for the Daily Bruin from 2017-2019. She was previously a 2016-2017 assistant editor of the A&E section, overseeing the theater, film and television beat.