While all of us hate to admit it, there’s no such thing as magic.
Courtesy of www.unipages.org
That dark-suited individual who wowed you and your 8-year-old friends at birthday parties with card tricks and colorful napkins was just a skilled entertainer who never completely grew up.
A family member — and not a gray-haired sprite with wings known as the Tooth Fairy — left coins and candy under your pillow when you lost a tooth.
And, though it pains me to mention this, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 because of a stellar lineup and deep pitching staff, not because some silly curse got lifted. (Apologies — I am in actuality a die-hard Boston fan.)
Likewise, the 20-page newspaper you currently hold in your hands — and which you will most likely throw away before you so much as finish reading this article — didn’t appear out of thin air.
It has taken a week of planning, 17 editors — shut inside a windowless office in the basement of Wilson Commons all Wednesday night (and Thursday morning) long — and a staff of over 50 writers countless hours to set it before you.
So, it is our collective hope and goal that you enjoy and perhaps take something from this issue of the Campus Times.
Or don’t. Throw it on the ground without reading any more than the front headline if you want. Use it as a napkin for a garbage plate, make it into a monstrous paper airplane or tear it into shreds and happily toss it all over the frat quad. You wouldn’t be the first.
I can, of course, only speak for myself, but there is a greater force that glues my eyes to a computer screen for hours at a time than seeing my name and words in print, getting to invent absurd titles to go along with these words, or even wielding the tremendous power that is choosing Athlete of the Week.
There’s a certain aspect to being an editor of this publication that I relish even more — a span of less than 20 minutes that makes the rest of my many hours spent actually working on the paper worthwhile. At some point during the early hours of Thursday morning (or afternoon, depending on who you are), every editor experiences a glorious “Twilight.”
From the point when an editor bids their fellow staff members a weary-eyed goodnight — like a soldier waving farewell to his comrades as he closes his time spent in the fray — to the moment those same eyes close after being alive and alert for 24 hours or more, the editor experiences a kind of high. This high is not simply a side effect of sleep deprivation, and, unless he’s very good at both his job and hiding it from his fellow staff member, no editor lights up before production night on the grassy knoll behind the Commons.
For me, the “walking-on-air” sentiment that defines the early-morning trek from the office to bed is a combined product of the knowledge that a job was well done — one that will live on in the hands of others and on computer monitors everywhere (OK, just in the general college and city area, with the possible exception of a late-night Internet prowler or two abroad) — and that a well-deserved hibernation for the bulk of the morning awaits.
Ironically, the editor’s “Twilight” often takes place at dawn, as the sun is just rising on the city of Rochester.
Though the concept of entering Wilson Commons with the sun still up and then emerging from it an eternity later to a new day is depressing — with no sleep and only a pair of glazed-over eyes to show for the night — the early-morning brilliance makes it all worthwhile.
Rush Rhees Library looks even more majestic than usual, as the first few rays of Thursday sunlight strike the dome before any other building on campus, bathing the iconic structure in a metallic gold, while the rest of the university resides in shadow.
Not a sound bothers the editor — it’s too soon for rush hour and too late for even the most dedicated midterm procrastinators. Just the shuffle of the editor’s feet on the brick walkway.
