Notes of nostalgia: the times are a-changing, but that’s okay

I don’t handle change very well.

I never have. When I was a child, I bought the same pair of tennis shoes year after year. Whenever my feet grew, I would just buy a new pair that was exactly the same as the old one — white with colored flowers on the side. I had to stop when I grew so old that the store didn’t carry the shoes in my size anymore.

Going off to college, my soon-to-be roommate was texting me, excitedly talking about future plans and how she couldn’t wait to get to Miami. It seemed like all my friends from home were the same way, counting down the days until they would leave for school.

I was the complete opposite. I was terrified to leave the only place I had ever known to move 300 miles away and live with complete strangers. When my parents left me, I cried the entire walk from their car back to my dorm, before wiping my eyes and trying to pull myself together as I met the people I would be living with for the next year.

As a senior about to graduate, I’m facing a lot of new experiences and unexpected changes. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next year, but I do know that I’ll have to leave the friends I’ve become close with in my short time at Miami and the newspaper that has become my home.

I vividly remember walking into the newsroom for the first time. The upperclassmen all seemed so smart and confident and like they knew all the answers. I was so intimidated and had no idea what I was doing.

The first article I ever wrote was an absolute mess. But through the advice of my editors, I soon got better, and I began to fall in love with journalism.

Journalism has made me more confident. I no longer shrink in the back of events, trying to draw up the courage to approach a stranger to ask for a comment. While I still have a lot to learn, I’ve come a long way from that first story I wrote that was absolutely torn apart by my editors.

And I think journalism has helped me to accept the change I was so hesitant to embrace initially. I love covering breaking news because it’s fast-paced and always different and exciting, which is kind of ironic and something I would not have pictured for myself upon entering college.

When my parents dropped me off at college or when I stood in the doorway of the newsroom so many times freshman year, terrified to step inside, I had no idea that on the other side, just three years later, this place would be so hard to leave.

I think that’s important to remember for the future. While goodbyes are never easy, I’ll soon be heading off to a new place that, hopefully, one day I will feel the same way about as I feel about Miami now.

@racheldberry