College makes life look like total cake, dude
KATIE
Swift like the flying bald ea
gle — that’s what college
was.
College was bits of incon
gruent smells and feelings that I
can’t even wrap my brain around to
make a concrete memory. A faint
feeling of afternoon bliss under a
Eugene sun, heartaches in winter,
the relief of spring, the endless driz
zle from inside the walls of Allen
Hall and the search for a light at the
end of four years of hard work. In
less than a week, the West Coast will
be behind me and my new life as an
intern with The Associated Press in
New York City will begin.
Looking back on four years,
there are friends that I know will
be with me forever and others that
I’ll never see again. Love never re
quited and gratitude never ex
pressed. Tear-induced laughter
from nights on the front porches
of 13th Street, and conversations
that I could never forget from late
nights at the Oregon Daily Emer
ald. I hope somewhere in the al
leys and subways of New York
City, I can find as much meaning
and friendship as I have at the
University of Oregon.
But college wasn’t all warm,
fuzzy memories. It’s taken 21
years of heartache and sweat for
me to begin to find the precious
balance between sad and happy,
work and play, and laughter and
tears. Everyone has their own ap
proach to life and mine has taken
me to where I stand now, ready to
suck it up and live life. Constant
feedback from professionals and
professors in journalism has made
me realize that words are just
words. It’s how you use them that
makes the difference.
Travels through the South Pacific
and summers in sailboats on Puget
Sound sought to shape me into a
humble, curious person. There’s
nothing I would change about my
experience at college — not even a
hazy freshman year at the Universi
ty of Hawaii filled with beer, sun,
surf and occasionally a lecture or
two. I took every failure and rejec
tion and made it into a challenge to
myself, and I made sure that each
new task felt harder and more in
spiring than the last.
And if it weren’t for a strange in
describable obsession with news
papers, I wouldn’t be able to move
so easily forward through my mis
takes every day without looming
failure on my back. The pursuit of
perfection every day on the pages
of newspapers has made me real
ize that one mistake is not the end
of the world. There is a new day
behind each sunset, and in the
grand scheme of the world, my job
to inspire the uninspired first
glances of eyes across words on
newsprint means nothing.
It has been through working at
the Oregon Daily Emerald that I’ve
seen the University and the world
change before my eyes. I’ve felt the
bitterness of student accusations of
misogyny and racism towards the
paper. I’ve felt the unwelcome
glances and words from other stu
dents of color because of my job at
the Emerald. I’ve felt the frustration
of trying to defend myself to stu
dents who vastly misunderstand
and take for granted the role of a
college newspaper. And I’ve
turned my back to the idea of pro
moting diversity. Diversity is a
word and concept that goes far be
yond skin color and enrollment
numbers. Diversity is an under
standing of others’ lives and em
bracing each person and their indi
viduality.
At the back of everyone’s mind,
there are those prickly regrets that
won’t go away. Trivial regrets like
my D- in Communication Ethics,
friends I never kept in touch with,
my choice of roommates my junior
year and too many beer-soaked
nights of fun to ever stay awake
through any of my fall term classes.
And there are bigger regrets that I
will remember for the rest of my
life, but it is in those regrets that
mistakes are marked forever and, I
hope, never repeated.
So while I un-twine myself from
my identity of student, I’m thankful
for the experience of college life and
ready for a life free from, term papers,
roommates, textbooks, and begin to
prepare for the easy stuff in life, be
cause anything should be easier than
graduating from college.
Katie filler is the design editor for the
OregQn Daily Emerald. Her views do not
necessary represent those of the Emerald.
She can be reached at kjm4660@glad
stone.uoregon.edu.
Senior’s last term paper makes her remember the joy
CAROL
I RINK
It happened two weeks ago. I
was sitting at my computer
during the wee hours of the
night, attempting to write a pa
per based on some book I had bare
ly skimmed through. With a freshly
brewed cup of coffee in hand, a
Moby CD blaring through my head
phones and less than seven hours
to both start and finish something
worthy of a passing grade, I real
ized something great.
This was the last paper I had to
write during my college career.
I was actually going to graduate,
and the thought caught me totally
off guard. I couldn’t help but re
member all the other times I had
been sitting at my desk doing this
same thing—procrastinating until
the last minute and finding any
thing else to occupy my time in
stead of just buckling down and
getting my work done. I was think
ing of the hundred other things I’d
rather be doing at 2 a.m. on a
Wednesday night—pounding
beers at Max’s, catching a late-night
flick at the Bijou, playing guitar un
til my fingers hurt. Hey, at that
point I would have even settled for
cleaning my room or watching the
Juiceman Juicer infomercial again.
But instead of becoming imme
diately overjoyed with happiness,
these thoughts made me nostalgic.
All of you seniors out there know
what I'm talking about, right? It’s
the feeling you get when you real
ize everything about the past four
years of your life is going to change.
It’s the feeling you get when you
watch everyone pick up the fall
2001 class schedule at the book
store and realize you can spend
your quarters on parking meters in
stead. It’s the feeling you get when
you discover you’ll actually have
to pay to see Duck football and bas
ketball games next season.
Don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t
mean I don’t want to graduate. I’m
counting down the days like a 6
year-old the week before Christ
mas. I get jittery just thinking about
walking across the stage at the com
mencement ceremony. But gradu
ating from college means more to
me than just receiving a diploma
for all the work I’ve done (or maybe
I should say should have done). I’m
graduating with many great memo
ries, too.
I’ll always remember meeting
Turn to Rink, page 7B
Where do we go after the
Oregon Daily Emerald?
Hi
III
Seven? eIn
THIAI
America Online Borders, Perrin & Norrander Chicago
Tribune Christian Science Monitor ESPNET sportsZone KOIN-TV
Los' Angeles Times JMcCannHErickson McMinnville News-Register
Inc.
Bee
imes Wall
AY BALTIMORE
Street Journal Washington Post USA Today Wall Street Journal
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These are just some of the places our graduates
are working. But it all started here.
Oregon Daily Emerald
Congratulations to our 2001 graduates!
Aaron Breniman
lack Clifford
Bryan Dixon
Montea Hande
Doug Hentges
Nicole Hubbard
Cassic Keller
Masahiro Koiima
Sara Uebertli
Jesse Long
Serena Markstrom
Katie Miller
Jenny Moore
Broohe Mossefin
Melissa O’Connell
Scon Pesznecfeer
Adam nee
Carol Rink
Giovanni Salimena
Laura Smit
R. Ashley Smith
Ross Ward
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
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