It was a quarter after two o’clock Wednesday morning when I started writing this column.
My second-to-last column – a column that most of you will be reading while I’m still in bed after a long production night.
The newsroom was empty and almost completely dark with the only light coming from the desk lamp perched atop my computer. It brightened enough of my desk for me to navigate the keyboard and highlight the page proofs that the section editors turned in earlier in the night.
It wasn’t until then that I grasped the fact that it was last time I’d be leaving The Knight office on a Tuesday night – or should I say Wednesday morning – as the editor-in-chief.
After the 2011-12 school year’s last issue next week, I’ll be walking out as a former editor and writer while someone else will be leaving as the new sheriff in town.
Not long after Tuesday most of you will forget about me and the columns that covered the Perspectives and Sports pages for the past two and a half years. You’ll start referring to me as, “That liberal kid who had perfect teeth and an extreme dislike for Ben Roethlisberger and bandwagon fans.”
That’s OK. I’m completely fine with that. It’s a fact that I’ve accepted.
However, what I haven’t come to grips with is the way I’ll feel when I finally walk out of that door with no reason to come back through it.
It’ll be some kind of concocted emotion that’s part short-term relief and part long-term sadness.
My nerves, mood and blood pressure will all benefit from no longer having to line up interviews, write articles, nag others, update the website and edit stories.
All that, however, will be short lived.
What will last longer than all that will be my sadness at never getting to write another column in The Knight – one of the highlights of my four years at Gannon – and the disappointment of leaving people that I thoroughly enjoy being around.
The Knight’s adviser, Frank Garland, always says that there is something special that happens when piecing together a 16-page paper on production (k)night and I couldn’t agree more.
Some of the best people I’ve met in my college career have spent their Tuesdays at the corner of 7th and Peach streets.
In fact, I can’t imagine a Tuesday night without The Gannon Knight. I have zero idea about where the good drink specials are or what the primetime TV lineup looks like on Tuesdays.
That’s what happens after four years of Tuesday enslavement.
However, for as much grief as I give The Knight sometimes, it just takes one look at our quote wall, which is filled with jokes of all kinds, for me to realize there is no other place I’d rather be at 4:32 a.m. on a Wednesday.
But enough of this mope junk. I still have one week left and I’m going to make the most of it.
