It seems weird writing this column. Maybe its just the finality of writing my last column, one of many last things I’ll be experiencing over the next few weeks. I thought it might be best to start at the beginning of my time writing at The Weekly before finally saying goodbye.

When I first started at The Weekly as a bored sophomore, I had just finished joining a host of organizations at the Organization Fair. I didn’t know what to expect but the leadership of The Weekly at the time was patient in explaining what they expected. I felt comfortable asking my editor questions to see if I was “doing it right.”

The excitement I felt at reading my first article in the paper was palpable—my heart was literally racing as I flipped forward to my article. As I skimmed through the article on women’s volleyball (you thought I started as a columnist, didn’t you?), I felt a sense of accomplishment in my contribution to The Weekly.

But after reading through the rest of The Weekly, I had a question for my editor that I sent to him in an e-mail. Can people write about whatever they want in the commentary section? He told me, pretty much, and gave me the email of the commentary editor to contact if I was interested in writing a column. From there, I contacted the commentary editor, met to sit down to talk about what I would write about and thus the “Learning from the Left” was born.

The freedom to write about whatever I wanted has been a mixed blessing for me. The hardest thing about it is trying to figure out what to write about. If I didn’t already have an idea in mind, I wouldn’t write that week because I felt that forcing myself to write brought down the quality of my writing. I figured people would be even less interested in reading about politics if every week or every other week they read about how “Bush is a terrible president because of X reason” or “Obama rocks because of Y.”

Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t write about Bush and Obama, but I’ve also varied my writing to talk about various current events or issues on campus. From alternative energy, to Minnesota culture, to faith on campus, I’ve enjoyed writing the most when I’ve had the opportunity to write about something beyond partisan politics. Hopefully, people have come to enjoy reading about those issues as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about them.

Before ending my reflections about my time writing at Gustavus, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you, to all the students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni who have told me they enjoyed reading one of my articles, that I wrote an insightful or well-written article. Comments like these have helped motivate me to continue writing and enjoy the times I get to write.

I also want to thank those people that challenged the contentions in my articles. I’ve valued the times I’ve debated or discussed what I’ve written about with people who disagree with me. It shows me that what I’ve written about is relevant and interesting enough to spark further conversation.

Finally, I wanted to thank my family, my father for helping me edit my articles over the years, making sure my grammar isn’t too atrocious, and my mother for collecting The Weekly whenever one of my articles is in it. It is the support of families to their children that has helped us get to this point of graduation. With that, I wish everyone who reads this the best of luck with whatever they do and hope some of that luck will find me as I look for a job, figure out what I’m going to do with my life and leave the bubble of Gustavus to enter into the “real world.” Goodbye Gustavus.