College is hard.
It wasn’t the classes that got me. Academics have always been my strong suit, and for the most part, I find there’s nothing that a pot of coffee can’t get me through.
I came to UF alone, which was fine. I made friends easily with a couple of the girls on my floor in Reid Hall and tagged along with them everywhere.
By the end of my first semester, I knew UF wasn’t for me. I’ve never been into football. I felt under-challenged in my classes. I couldn’t get my new friends to come with me to punk rock shows, downtown art exhibits or most of the other things I liked to do.
I started looking into transfer programs. My parents told me college would get better. So, I stuck it out.
I chatted at frat parties with many friendly frat boys who didn’t seem to care that I was a member of Gamma Delta Iota sorority.
(In retrospect, a lot of them were probably too drunk to get the joke. But most of them were nice to me.)
I went to tailgates, adorned myself with Gator gear and sang “We Are the Boys from Old Florida” with strangers at the end of the third quarter. I still love singing the song.
I joined a couple of student organizations: Pride Student Union and Volaticus, the aerial dance club.
I did all of these things with people I met on campus, my freshman floormates and their friends they’d been going to school with for a decade already. They were kind people with good hearts, and I keep in touch with a few of them.
But I still felt deeply unsatisfied with life.
When I started working at the Alligator, my world opened up quite a bit.
Two full years into my undergraduate career, I met people who were like me, both in personality and preferences.
I’m fond of saying that working here is one part summer camp, one part “All the President’s Men” and one part Jameson Irish Whiskey.
But more than allowing me to make friends with people who want to do the same things I want to do, the Alligator gave me a sense of purpose.
Part of it is putting into practice what I learn in classes every day. You’re not always sure what to do with those lessons in, say, ethics, until you have to make an ethical decision that could affect the lives of the people you write about in the paper. (I’m looking at you, Dr. Lewis. Thanks.)
But the best thing about working for the Alligator, for me, is being part of something bigger than myself.
For the past 16 weeks, I was at the helm of the largest student-run newspaper in the country. We print 30,000 copies of the Alligator every day, but publishing online has expanded our reach to readers around the world. Really. I’ve received hate mail, love mail and threats of lawsuits from readers in Berkeley, Calif., London and Puerto Rico, respectively.
It puts things in perspective for me.
I went through a fairly traumatic breakup earlier this semester.
Luckily, working upward of 40 hours a week running a newspaper didn’t leave me a lot of extra time to wallow. Nothing takes your mind off your own suffering more than a missing UF student and a presidential election, especially when you know that literally tens of thousands of people expect you to follow through so they can read about it.
I come to work every day loving what I do. Find something in college that makes you feel the same way, regardless if it’s related to your major or what anyone else thinks you should do.
Working at this newspaper has made my college experience worthwhile. I hope you make what’s left of your four years here worthwhile for you.
Erin Jester is the editor of the Independent Florida Alligator. You can contact her at ejester@alligator.org.
