Today my term of the best student job at Notre Dame comes to an end.
Many students do not have the same definition as me - working at least 30 hours every week, giving up a lot of your social life and putting everything else second to your job.
It's hard to explain to people when you talk about leaving the office as the sun rises, breakfast cooks in South Dining Hall or your roommate awakens while you crawl into bed.
But ask the person taking over for me, and she'll agree. Ask the Editors in Chief from the past 38 years, and you'll get the same thing.
There's something about this job that makes it all worth it.
Racking my brain for the past couple of weeks to figure what it is, I've come to a conclusion.
It's the people down here in the basement of South Dining Hall with me.
I'll always remember the way the staff came together for the Notre Dame presidential change, a U.S. Presidential election and Notre Dame football coaching change.
The way the news and sports staffs sucked it up to turn what could have been three stories into eight-page special sections.
Three events that resulted in leaving the office past 5 a.m. after a 15-hour day.
Three events worth every minute of that hard work.
Three events that couldn't have been covered so well without my hard-working staff.
I'm not just paying lip service by saying that.
I can honestly say without them, especially Meghanne and Joe, the coverage of those events wouldn't have been as good. We couldn't have gone as in-depth or as broad with our stories covering those monumental events.
But it's not the professional relationships that make this place what it is, it's the personal ones. When you work from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. with people, and do it all over again the next day, a bond develops.
A bond that certainly won't be forgotten just because my name's not underneath Editor in Chief anymore or because my four years underneath the Golden Dome have run out.
So now I have two months to be a college student. It starts on Thursday with a drive to Miami for a weeklong cruise in the Caribbean.
It'll continue through the end of the semester with watching baseball at the Eck and on my dish, frequenting the local watering holes during the week and maybe studying. (Okay, let's be honest, I'm a second semester senior).
Finally it'll end with a Senior Week to remember and hopefully a picture-perfect graduation weekend.
Thanks Notre Dame, it's been one hell of a ride.
And if you didn't like me, I at least did one thing right.
The crossword was in the paper every day.
