(photo provided by Chris Hanna)
For those who know me best, I spent countless hours at The Daily Campus over the last four years. Perhaps too many hours for my own good. Late nights led to loss of sleep and it was a vicious cycle.
Yet, despite the troubles they caused, those late nights were all worth it. Always.
The Daily Campus building between Moe’s and Buckley is where I met and became close with so many people, especially my best friends Josh and Tyler, from our very first Shippee days to the very last shift at the DC with the NFL Draft going on in the background, and Liv, who I met during our annual Ted’s ugly Christmas sweater party junior year and has been a constant source of laughs for the last few years.
Of course, there’s also my girlfriend, Julia, who I met at this little newspaper building. She knows how corny I am, but she’s been my rock during my tenure as Editor-in-Chief and I am so tremendously lucky. Without Julia, my stress would’ve been far worse.
All that said, I’m extremely glad it’s over and I am very much ready to be moving on to my next chapter. I’ve been at The Daily Campus for four years, UConn for five. I’ll graduate with an unorthodox combination of unrelated majors in PNB and journalism, and grinded to study for an MCAT that made my last semester at college far more difficult than I’d hoped it would be, all while being the leader of this organization.
Simply put, the Editor-in-Chief experience has been a tedious and stressful one. There have been more ups than downs for sure; it had its rewards and I took pride in the position, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that this was a one-year gig. My time is up and I’m ready for the challenges ahead.
Everyone worked tremendously hard to put out a great product this year and I’m happy to see what we accomplished as a group, and that will continue without me and the other executives who will be graduating.
Seeing all those people new and old coming up through the Daily Campus staircase has been something near and dear to my heart over the years and I’m thrilled to see what the paper will accomplish in the next several years with the new executives and a fresh group of new writers and photographers.
I was one of those wide-eyed recruits a few years back and I’m almost bewildered at how much I’ve changed since then. The experience has been a foundation of my time at UConn and just in general as my development into an adult. But now I’ll be applying for jobs for my gap year, as well as for medical school. I’ve wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon for a majority of my life and I’m very ready to continue down that path after I graduate Sunday.
I’ll look back at my time at The Daily Campus and at UConn fondly for having given me the breadth of skills, the leadership experience and the memories, too. Maybe one day, after I’ve finished my career in orthopedic surgery, I could freelance or contribute to a journal focused on sports medicine and I’ll have the DC to thank for that.
But until then, I have a lot in my life to look forward to right now and I’m more than happy to be moving on to my next chapter.
Chris Hanna is the outgoing Editor-in-Chief for The Daily Campus, covering women’s basketball. He can be reached via email at christopher.hanna@uconn.edu. He tweets @realchrishanna.