Change is bittersweet

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. The semester comes to an end, friends leave for the summer, campus is filled with students struggling to pack up all of their belongings and move out of the dorms, the weather changes and life becomes different.

It's that time when you're emotions are in an oxymoron-like knot of both happy and sad at the same time.

Life changes, and with it comes new friends, new classes, new teachers, new beginnings.

This year, a big change is coming for me: I'm taking over The East Carolinian as the new Editor-in-Chief for the 2008-09 school year, and I'm caught up in those end-of-the-semester crazy emotions.

Although working for this fine newspaper is hard work (most nights are spent guzzling some type of caffeine and stressing over every little detail), I have made some of my best friends working here. Over furiously typing articles at 11 p.m. on a production night and downing fast food meals, The East Carolinian office has become like my family away from family. And my taking over signals that others are leaving. But as the old adage says, "the news stops for no one." And I am no exception.

Being the Features editor for the last year has only confirmed my passion for journalism and how it really can change people's lives.

Every issue that we put out I feel proud of and work relentlessly to make it great. Some of my favorite stories that I have written about this year are about those things that really touch me as a college student, and I hope that our readers feel the same way.

I want our school paper to reach new heights this year, and I have big plans for it. Next year might not cover the same things as this past year, but I hope that I can take The East Carolinian up a notch so that my predecessors will be proud.

So as I take up this new post as editor, I will miss the ones that are graduating and going into the real world, but I will work my hardest to make our school's newspaper interesting, real and readable for all students who attend ECU.

Change is always hard, but I know what I'm getting into, and I'm ready for it.

As all of the graduating seniors say 'goodbye,' it's my turn to say 'hello.'

This writer can be contacted at features@theeastcarolinian.com.