Everybody changes ‘- the guy sitting next to you in chemistry, the girl blabbing on her cell phone and even the once mousy nerd who decided to venture to the University of Massachusetts.

The second I hit this campus I changed. I was gunning to escape my small hometown of Princeton, Mass., and I knew college was a time to reinvent myself. I lived with a bunch of other people who liked to read and write, laugh and liked me for me ‘- and then that all changed, too.

The second I walked into The Massachusetts Daily Collegian during my sophomore year, that windowless basement of the Campus Center, I knew it was the place for me. Being naturally inquisitive, I thought reporting would be a great way to build up some professional writing skills, killer clips and maybe one day find a job instead of living life in a cardboard box castle.

I knew I wanted to be an editor. Not just at The Collegian, but in life after college. Even that might upgrade me to at least a nice, woodland shack.

At The Collegian I found what I needed most: a change of college scenery. Down at the paper I found some of the best friends I will ever meet, the worst fights I’ve ever had, the place I cried over the most, the place where my away message has pinned me at the most, and created a lifelong love affair with reading and writing. Now here I am, on the executive board of The Collegian, wondering what’s going to change next ‘- in my life and in the bigger world ‘- especially the realm of print media.

I have my heart set on working with books ‘- being a book editor, in fact. But like the newspaper business, print publishing is changing radically and its future depends on that change.

As newspapers, magazines, journal articles, books and even business memos, move to the computer screen, with one click of a button the print publishing field is being forced to update and modernize their business of producing a physical text to avoid the fear of becoming outdated, unwanted and obsolete. It’s a scary concept for some people, especially those who enjoy the feel and smell of the pages between their fingers.

But I like the Internet. And I like printing a paper.

Marshall Poe, a professor who published his scholarly text as an e-book said, ‘As far as I can tell ‘hellip; a digital picture of a naked lady is still a picture of a naked lady. But, so many of my colleagues tell me, a digital book is not really a book.’

The realm of convergence has no limits, is colorful ‘- and at least in my belief ‘- is at many times just as authoritative as a book.

So print isn’t dead yet, folks. It’s just undergoing a change, a renovation, a new stage in its professional life.

My work on this campus at The Collegian and at the University of Massachusetts Press (to whom I owe my endless gratitude) has been a real-life experience into a changing world of print media. Books ‘- just like generations of human beings ‘- have been forced to grow up and adapt to changing cultural values for years and so will those who create them.

Hopefully, that’s a change I can be a small part of.

Kate Olesin was the night supervisor of The Daily Collegian. She can be reached at [email protected].