I’ve changed many a sentence in my four years as a copy editor at The Pitt News. Oxford commas, semicolons, single quotation marks — all have been dashed to pieces under my cursor. I’ve cut passive verbs and sliced away redundancies like “8 a.m. in the morning.” I’ve changed “advisor” to “adviser” and “protestor” to “protester,” and I’ve capitalized the U in University more times than I can count.

Do I derive satisfaction from this? Okay, yes, some, or I wouldn’t have stuck with it for so long, I wouldn’t spend embarrassing amounts of time going down AP Stylebook rabbitholes, and I certainly wouldn’t be planning on copy editing after graduation. But sometimes the rules get old. And so, in a last act of copy chief tyranny, I’ve decided to bid TPN goodbye by breaking as many copy desk rules as I can. For the keen-eyed among you, I’ve listed most of my misdemeanors at the bottom.

It’s hard to know what to do with this last, precious space; there are too many possible directions. Shall I wax poetic about what this dear newsroom has meant to me, how it’s been the steady throughline in all the ups and downs of college, and how much I’ll miss it? Should I give advice to my freshman year self (as if she’d absorb a single word)? Maybe I ought to use this bully pulpit to reiterate the importance of student journalism and institutional accountability as world leaders turn truth on its head and criticize anyone who points it out.

Maybe a little bit of everything.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that after May 4th, if I come knocking on the William Pitt Union’s fourth floor, I’ll be the graduate who can’t let go, who everyone patiently humors while internally shaking their heads. I’ve spoken about TPN in the first person for so long: how will I go from “we” to “it”? I’ll only indulge my preemptive nostalgia a little longer and say that this is a deeply unique newsroom, in the truest sense of the word, even though nothing is really unique, as our last news advisor rightly adnd often pointed out. The people I’ve worked with are kind, caring, dedicated, and unbelievably hard-working. Every editor and writer I know has juggled at least one other internship or job with their TPN work, and they still clock hours and hours per week to try to keep this newsroom strong. 

It can seem mysterious from the outside, but in a beautiful — and terrifying — way, the whole newsroom rests on maybe three dozen people consistently setting aside a good night’s sleep and going after a source, or rewriting a paragraph, or calling the lawyer to check if we can pretty please publish that; yes, we promise we’ll put SATIRE in really big words in front of the headline. Rarely have I left the newsroom at 12 a.m. without having laughed hard enough to make my stomach hurt a little. TPN has cheered me up when I was grumpy, challenged me when I was scared, and given me community when I was lonely. Sometimes the newsroom feels like it’s my spouse of twenty years: I love it, even though we drive each other crazy. I hope that in the future, I’ll find coworkers and friends who care about each other and their work as much as TPNers do.

Here’s some miscellaneous advice that I wish I’d taken to heart earlier. 

1. Talk to people, even when it’s awkward. You can’t make friends without going out and trying things, and you need people in your life. Join a club and keep going to it consistently. Strike up conversations with your classmates. When you find someone kind, someone who is excited to spend time with you, just as you are, hold on and don’t let go.
2. At the same time, being alone a lot of the time is nothing to be ashamed about. You’re great company! Explore the city, where you’ll be surrounded by people anyway. You are wonderful all by yourself.
3. You’re allowed — and actually encouraged — to talk to your professors. That’s kind of the whole point here. They’re people, too, and you’ll learn infinitely more from having real conversations with them. 
4. Grades are at most the 9th most interesting thing about you, and usually lower. 
5. Try to avoid living alone.
6. There’s so much funding at Pitt for research and creative projects. It’s for you, too! Go and find it.
7. If you have the opportunity to work for The Pitt News, take it.

And finally, some overwrought sentiments about the value of student media. Many universities do not have student papers. Many more have small crews or publish once a month or less. Some face pressure to suppress stories or have their funding cut. I feel lucky to have worked in such a supportive and productive newsroom — one where I got to lead a copy staff of eight people, which is more than some national outlets have — but I know that’s not guaranteed to last forever as technology and public opinion continue to morph. To everyone who’s returning next fall, I wish you the very best. Keep doing the unpleasant work that makes people write you angry emails, and keep writing the stories that touch people’s hearts. Resist the pressure to censor your writing, and stand up for yourself and your coworkers when things get dicey.

I have loved every minute of editing behind the scenes and getting the inside scoop on campus happenings from those who know Pitt best. Working in this newsroom, with all the wonderful people who have occupied it over the years, has been the honor and joy of my time at Pitt. I will miss TPN dearly.

Mistakes — did you catch ’em all?

• “Okay” instead of “OK”

• Semicolon

• Oxford comma

• “Freshman” instead of “first-year”

• Parentheses

• “4th” instead of “4”

• Colon

• Italics

• “Advisor” instead of “Adviser”

• “12 a.m.” instead of “midnight”

• “Twenty” instead of “20”
  “Ninety-seven percent” instead of “97%”

• “US” instead of “U.S.”

• “9th” instead of “ninth”