Right now, I’m sitting on the couch in The Daily Gamecock’s newsroom. People that I’ve known for years and people that I’ve known for only months are sitting around me, discussing today’s paper, their classes and how we’re going to get the paper done before deadline tonight. I’ve been complaining for three hours about how I have no idea how to write this column, and I still don’t (about that deadline … ).
Trying to sum up three and a half years of this crazy, wonderful experience into a mere 500 words is pretty close to impossible, I think.
There are so many things I could say to show how much this paper means to me, but I have no idea where to start, where to finish or what I could possibly say in between.
There was that time we stayed up all night trying to send the paper until, eventually, I had to leave for my 8 a.m. class.
There was that time my staff turned everything in my office upside down as a prank. That included the desk, which must have weighed a few hundred pounds, and all of the pictures and newspapers hanging on the walls.
There were all those times we went to IHOP to celebrate the last night of production, and tonight, when we’ll go to Waffle House because IHOP was knocked down.
There were all the times we put a paper out despite breaking news and uncooperative sources.
The Daily Gamecock has defined my college experience. The newsroom where I’ve spent countless hours has become a second home. The people I’ve spent those countless hours with have become my family. And when I graduate in May and do … something, that will be the thing I miss most: the people.
I’ve never seen passion and talent in such large quantities as I have in my time at the paper. The people that make the eight to 12 pages you pick up every day (or something like that) are some of the most wonderfully insane human beings I’ve ever met.
They don’t mind staying up until 3 a.m. before an 8 a.m. class just to make sure every Oxford comma is eliminated and all the elements of a page are lined up just right.
They don’t mind covering an event while all their friends are in Five Points.
They don’t mind my incessant harping on grammar and AP style.
OK, maybe they mind, but they do it anyway.
My staff has worked so hard, and I couldn’t possibly complete a farewell column — which, I guess, is supposed to sum up my experience as editor-in-chief — without thanking them for everything they’ve done.
So thanks, guys. You’ve been the best staff I could have ever asked for.