All my life, writing has been a source of strength, creativity, and self advancement. The act of taking isolated thoughts out of the ether and sending their messages through a series of lines, curves and symbols is absurd when you get down to it. And this exhausting and, at times, painful process has been my lifeblood ever since I tried to write a novel in the fourth grade.
I started writing at the Collegian out of a frustration with one of my other long-term commitments: the Student Government Association. I was rejected from filling a vacancy in it so I marched straight down to our office in the Campus Center basement and demanded to cover the SGA.
Over the past four years, I have found that my writing is often wielded as a weapon or tool that ultimately helps shape the issues and overall perceptions of the SGA. I came to view myself as both the chronicler and critic.
Investigations surrounding embezzled funds, features on the advantages of online voting, and weekly updates – most written an hour past my deadline – helped me feel like a real political journalist and an integral part of student politics.
My time in Argentina was another formidable college experience that writing for the Collegian helped me through. I loved the opportunity to write detailed and introspective accounts of the exotic locations throughout South America I visited. It also allowed for some of the best excuses for missing a deadline: “I’m sorry this is late, a jungle monsoon knocked out power at my hostel; I’m also sorry if this is difficult to edit, I’m writing on a Portuguese keyboard in Microsoft Word in Spanish.” Needless to say, people didn’t enjoy editing that Global Perspectives submission.
But more importantly, the weekly Global Perspectives columns forced me to confront the enormous changes I was feeling due to the experiences I was having – the entire school willingly read my confession and journal about Argentina every two weeks.
In general, UMass has been somewhere where I have been free to pursue whatever ambitions and passions I have desired, and all in the safety of a bubble of college experimentation. I haven’t done everything I could do, but I have done everything I wanted.
Were the past four years perfect? Hell no! Were they what I needed? Hell yes!
On that note, chase every dream you can in Amherst. You will find an incredible amount of success and be truly ready to transpose your pursuit of excellence from UMass to the real world; I already feel it happening now.
It takes a fool to think a two-to-three minute speech, much less a 750 word column, can fully encapsulate these past four years. Instead, I find it better to internalize what has happened and realize it never ends. Every experience stays with you forever by altering – sometimes imperceptibly – your worldview. I’d rather focus on how I will change in order to reflect on what has happened than really attempt to explain it all. Granted, writing is the best way I can come close to expressing everything for you now, because I’m damn sure this would be quite a sloppy speech.
In that case, I’ll let Stephen King, one of the first authors that I truly fell in love with, pick up the slack.
“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”
To be honest, I don’t need the self-satisfaction anymore of being considered the authoritative voice on what going through UMass means and does to one. There are tens of thousands of stories here, and while I might view my college life as fairly all-encompassing, the only story I can share and really understand is my own. Ask me in a few years if I’m happy, then we’ll know if I’ve understood my story.
Mike Fox was a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
