Senior send-off: A cryptic final message
Jacob Lewis/The Hofstra Chronicle
I am in denial. That is why I don’t want to write my senior send-off. But here I am, writing it. Why? Is it an attempt to be brave? To accept the passage of time? Maybe. But what upsets me most of all is that I have to reflect on a time that is not even over yet, thus killing my memories prematurely. There is a terrible finality to this essay, and the action of writing it is like putting pennies on the eyes of my past self. I don’t want to say goodbye to her and her memories. I don’t want to say goodbye to the sublime innocence which sustained me for four strange years.
Am I being cryptic? I will try and be straightforward and chronological and say the things I am supposed to say, even though, if I’ve learned anything about myself, it’s that I like to reject any imposed structure. I have become disastrously contrarian. But going forward, I will try to stick to the script. Only who knows, maybe I will try and sneak an Oxford comma in here and there, just to shake the universe a little bit.
When my father went to Hofstra, the Chronicle was the most important part of his life. This was before InDesign, so he had to stay up late, putting the paper together by hand. He loved the Chronicle so much that he became editor-in-chief. The memories from his time at the Chronicle are infinitely precious to him, since the real world of journalism will never be as fun as the college version.
I would be lying if I said that I was always inspired to join the Chronicle and, to use a cliché, “follow in my father’s footsteps.” I always liked writing. This, perhaps, has something to do with my father, but I really can’t say. Anyways, I’m not one for contrived origin stories. I find them reductive. As though I could distill the history of my life into a paragraph! As though I could fit myself into a box built from words.
When I joined the Features section at the Chronicle, I reported to Drashti Mehta and Rachel Bowman. They terrified me, but they also inspired me to work hard and be better, to live up to their poise and prowess (even though I must accept that no amount of perfectionism on my part will ever put me at their level). Most importantly, they believed in me and gave me an opportunity to be a Features assistant. Believe me, my father’s past position gave me neither delusions of grandeur nor a sense of journalistic ambition, so this came as a wonderful surprise. And it would, of course, shape the rest of my college experience.
Betty Araya became a Features assistant at the same time I did, and without her, I don’t know how I would have survived that rigorous experience. Betty and I became better at writing and editing together, and soon, Rachel graduated, Drashti became editor-in-chief and the Features section belonged to Betty and I. Betty, how I miss you, especially now. I miss your vision, and I miss your inner light, which shone even when we were no longer in-person. The pandemic warped our college experience for the worse, yet you still managed to guide us through that troubled time. You were always looking on the bright side. The Chronicle will never be quite the same without you.
Meanwhile, I have these new partners in crime: Anna DeGoede and Julian Rocha. They were my assistants, but now they basically run the Features section. I love you both so dearly. While I’ve been off making movies (or whatever it is film majors do), you’ve made this section your own. I can’t wait to see what both of you will do next.
My last words as Features editor have to be about myself. I am, after all, saying goodbye to a state of being. I think I will miss her, my past self. But I am angry at her. She was so ungrateful for her time at college! She spent the whole time wishing for it to be over, wishing to be doing something else other than studying or writing scripts or first-looking articles. It all seemed so arbitrary. Why should I do my homework instead of sleeping? Why should I have to sit through this class or this meeting when I could be out having fun? What was the point? Now I’m all choked up in disbelief over this ingratitude. Each moment of college contained so many infinities. I wish I could go back with a different attitude. I wish I could have been grateful for the vibrant pain which meant yet another day of college.
Alright, here we are, at the end. I hate this part! I might just end this article with an ellipsis so that I don’t have to accept this particular ending. That’s what I did in my last essay at the Chronicle, you know. And I am nothing if not self-referential. But I think I will end things with a period. I think I need to accept that eras end, that people and things dissolve into memory. I thought that eternity was static. But maybe eternity is, in fact, the endless acceptance of change.
