If there is one flaw to which I will readily admit, it is that I can sometimes take things a bit too seriously.
I study constantly, take too many classes, worry incessantly about law school admissions and lie awake at night wondering about the headlines I wrote. In short, I am your typical impatient, overanxious, perfection-seeking Type A college student, and I probably fit right into the stereotype of the chronically sleep-deprived, deadline-driven journalist.
Recently, several of my friends asked me why I had chosen to join Copy. I rambled on about something random and inconsequential, as I am wont to do, but later, I had to think about it.
It took me a while to realize that one of the innumerable reasons why Copy is great is that there are rules dictating just about every single thing ““ style, grammar, spelling, proper nouns, titles ““ many of them baffling, some of them probably inane and all of them gloriously reassuring.
When I didn’t know what to do or why I was doing something, I could always rely on a rule born from the expertise of people with far more experience and knowledge than I. If nothing else, I could always fall back on a rote, “That’s the rule, sorry about it,” when talking to a writer.
The Bruin forced me to understand that the best manner to approach some things is to let them go, rather than obsessing over them.
When I became copy chief, all the rules that had previously been so reassuring became nerve-wracking instead, as it fell primarily to me to decide them. Terrified of any missteps, I was caught off-guard more than once, stuttering before leaping forward with an answer that, in all likelihood, I had just made up on the spot based on experience, caprice and a great hope that I was correct.
Of course, my better decisions were always due to the gentle nudging from pointed questions by the other slot editors and by insightful, curious writers.
Lacking my previous safety net of having a top editor make the ultimate decisions for me, I built my own structure as copy chief, and learned to depend on the other copy editors around me, a lesson I am still absorbing.
But here I am, on the cusp of graduation and the first step into a life that won’t necessarily have the orderliness I have always preferred.
I am afraid of a time when I will no longer have email chains and group texts about scheduling, stories and random Daily Bruin style tips, a time when I can no longer even latch onto social bonds. I am terrified of not knowing the rules that will keep me on the right path moving forward, of not having anything to fall back on or anyone to catch me if I mess up.
As I have learned, though, this lack of structure sometimes just means an abundance of possibility ““ the possibility of creating our own rules, of forging our own paths.
Leong was copy chief from 2011-2012, a slot editor from 2010-2011, and a copy editor from 2009-2010.