Wonder, 'Have I done enough?' and then try to

All I could wonder was if I had done enough to appreciate the gift I'd been given.

In college, we live in a world of amazing opportunity, especially in a setting such as this university. We are encouraged to experiment and explore while interacting with future leaders and experimenters. Despite our fundamental differences, we have not yet become as inaccessible to the other side as one day we will be.

It is an unequalled opportunity. Have we done enough with it?

Rarely are we able to fully appreciate the importance of things, experiences and people in our lives while we can still do something about it.

One step removed from the hustle I was caught up in for four years, I look around and realize how many things and people have moved on - me among them - in that time, while campus events and trends remain generally the same. I tackle new challenges and watch my friends do the same at their new jobs and lives. I marvel at how far we have come since we saw each other daily.

I have been fortunate enough to gain that perspective. It makes me wonder more, did I do enough? Can you ever?

Unlike many who write teary farewells, I am not leaving Ann Arbor in a couple weeks. I am not yet graduating. But, like them, I am moving on to a new stage, where treasured parts of myself like the Daily will no longer play a constant role. Yet the lessons will forever shape me.

One of my professors told me that my long days and nights as a Daily news editor would serve me well in medicine. I stared at him blankly. Now I am regularly amazed at how right he was.

I know that my deadline personality and my ability to cope with a million things at once were carved out of what succeeds in a newsroom. I know I am able to ask strangers any question without cringing because it was my job. I know I have a tenacity characteristic of a reporter tracking down a story. I know that I learned to write and edit under the watchful tutorial of those before me. I know that clear and concise are better in the end, yet more difficult in the process. I know I was forced to be the boss in good and bad times, and I know the perils of hierarchy over one's peers. I know the intrinsic value of history's precedent and the weight of almost 110 years of tradition.

I can only hope I have given back a fraction of what has been given to me.

I can only wonder if I did enough while I was there. And while I can leave physically, I can never leave emotionally.

People leave this building with new and bigger things ahead of them, as I do, but the incredible thing is that they never forget how being in this building prepared them for that future. One of my co-editors, after a particularly emotionally searing night, said that we would never again work in a place like this. We must understand and know all that happens and all those who make it happen at the University, at once an awesome responsibility and fantastic opportunity.

In doing so, we surrender a part of ourselves to the institution. We forge deep relationships with people who also walked in and couldn't leave. We yell and argue with the passion that brings us here and then kick back long after hours and talk and laugh until the sun comes up. We spend our time off with those same people on road trips and at parties. We share memories richer than most roommates'. We cry, create and grow up together.

It is at its least a job. In retrospect, we should consider it an honor.

Not everyone at the University of Michigan has this experience. But for anyone who let themselves become engulfed by something larger than themselves, the common threads are there and will always be. This is what all students should be required to have, for it is the part of "college" we treasure and that shapes us. It is intense, exhilarating and preciously short. The memories will be vivid and comforting in the big, chilly world.

With this last word, I complete a six-year road with The Michigan Daily. I look around me at the empty office and see all the times and the people who were part of the noise, the commotion and the images. The sensation is surreal.

When I leave tonight, I too walk into the shadows, into the ranks of memories and tradition. I become a byline in the dusty volumes, one more ghost watching from the attic.

- Megan Schimpf can be reached over e-mail at mschimpf@umich.edu

Megan Schimpf Prescriptions

04-09-99