Daily Newsie

I’m sitting here in the university library, taking a quick mental health break from writing a literature review for my favorite class. The topic is image repair; more specifically, the image repair of the president of my alma mater after she cut the university’s football program to save money. It’s not nearly as salacious as I hoped, but it’s a topic that’s interesting to me and shouldn’t be too much of a burden to turn into a 25-page paper.

I just e-mailed the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, a publication that’s little more than a PR rag for the university (my alma mater’s journalism program was pathetic, to say the least), and asked for back issues of the paper dealing with this issue, and it got me waxing nostalgic about my days as EIC. I’ve already decided to throw in an extra $30 or so when I send him a check for shipping (if he agrees to send along the copies) so the reporting and editing staff can have a pizza party on me — it’s the least I can do for how much fun that place was. Looking back, I cringe at what passed for “journalism,” but we really did have a great time.

Sitting at my elbow are a stack of documents about the football program, about the university, about the reactions of students when they heard the team was no more. It’s got me thinking about my undergraduate days, when eating entire pints of Ben & Jerry’s at 3 a.m. in the newspaper office was perfectly acceptable, when “studying” meant my best friend and I made up subject-appropriate lyrics to her 80’s mix CD, when returning home after a night out involved practically crawling up the hill that separated campus from the only bar in town. Everything was so much less complicated then — and I know everyone always says that, but it really was.

Now I don’t have anyone knocking on my door at midnight to drag me out to a party. My best friend lives 12 hours away, and I can’t drive home on the weekends anymore. I can’t blow off studying because I want to graduate with honors, and I can’t absorb communication theory by singing along with Devo. In some ways, I wish I was still the carefree girl who called her boss “dude” and thought life revolved around Instant Messenger, but I know those days are gone forever. Life’s pretty good the way it is now, but every now and then I think … I wish I were 21 again.