I really did not want to edit this graduation issue. It’s been lingering on my Gmail to-do list for months now with one of those frowny face emoticons next to it, perpetually un-checked-off.

But it’s not because I knew assembling this issue would mean yet another marathon weekend locked away in the third floor of Norris eating Cheetos for dinner and wondering about the more exciting things my friends were doing. And it’s not because it means that we have just one week left here. Those things are all true, but none are the reason I was reluctant to get to work.

It’s because I knew it would mean saying one of my hardest goodbyes before I even receive my diploma or pack up my apartment. I love this paper and the places it led me and, most of all, the people I love because of it. The Daily is the thing that felt the most important to me in college, and that, in turn, made me feel the most important. And I know that in saying goodbye, in sending the issue off to the printers and into your hands, all of this will start to feel a little bit small, perhaps even a little bit trivial.

We all have that thing. Maybe it was your senior thesis, or your boyfriend, or your frat or your intramural soccer team. The thing about college is that the people and events most important to you are all magnified. It’s not so much a college bubble as it is this magical world where everything – the good stuff, the bad stuff, even the stuff somewhere in between – feels heightened, because that’s the point: In college, the idea was to “get an experience.”

There’s no other place or time in our lives where that’s such an important task. Later in life there will be singular and more tangible goals – a mortgage to pay or a promotion to fight for – but right now, and for the past four years, there were the classes we picked and the friends we made and the busy we chose primarily to figure out some vague concept of who we are or what we want to become. We had more freedom to fall in and out of love with more people and more ideas than I think you will get in the real world. We were spoiled with opportunity.

When we entered Northwestern as eager freshmen they told us to try it all out: join student groups, take weird classes and make friends anywhere and everywhere we could. And then we pared back. As our narrative began to take shape we edited, re-organizing and leaving some things and people in the margins as we allowed others to take on more important roles.

What we are left with, the really good stuff, is what we are saying goodbye to right now. It’s pretty hard.

Maybe you are left with a lot of stuff, or maybe it’s a little that adds up to a lot. Regardless, that is what we are holding on to most tightly this week and possibly for the next 15 years if you are ‘that guy.’

So I hope that somewhere in these pages we’ve managed to capture at least the context, if not the content, of something that was important to you here. It’s a tall order, so I make no promises that we’ve managed to do that for everyone.

But what I hope most of all is that you felt such a part of something or someone here that that you too dread saying goodbye but realize how lucky you are to feel that way. Because that, I think, is far from small.

– Katherine Driessen