30-hour pursuit of happiness

Last spring, I was given an assignment — write about an aspect of life on campus that has impacted you the most. The task was not exactly easy: quantifying my experience atUR as the result of mostly one part of life wouldn’t really be accurate.

Still, when it came down to it, there was really only one question I needed to ask myself to determine what has taught me the most: Where do I currently spend over 30 hours each week? That answer was easy — the Campus Times office.

At first glance, an editor’s job might not be the most appealing. Hours are long, minute problems can push progress back a disproportionate amount and at times most frustratingly, newspapers are cyclical. The period allotted for basking in the glow of 20 completed pages seems to decrease each week. By the time you are finished catching up on sleep, you have to think about next week’s issue.

Because I don’t think you can write an article without a sports analogy. There are times when I often think of an editor’s position as that of an athlete. Plays happen in succession and you must either adapt or you won’t succeed — you can’t dwell in the past, but you must learn from it.

So these positions aren’t always easy, but honestly, what job worth doing ever is? Kanye West say it’s so in “Stronger”, therefore, it is true. And I am confident that I would not have loved working for the newspaper for the past year and a half if I didn’t enjoy and grow from the challenges I faced on a daily basis.

I know I’m not alone on this campus, either — whether you are a student athlete, the president of a club or even an optics major, you understand the concept of a challenge pretty well. But you persevere because the resulting sense of accomplishment is fulfilling.
It would be an outright lie to say that the job didn’t also have more than its fair share of perks. Free dinner every Wednesday, knowing that Eve 6 was performing on D-Day before the rest of the student body, a press pass to Stephen Colbert, dinner with Mayor Duffy — yes, life is good.

But perhaps the best bonus is simply feeling like you are a part of something. Each week, our staff comes together to produce a paper. We don’t all want to pursue journalism as a career or, in some cases, even like to write. But what we do share is an enthusiasm for our respective passion and a desire to share that enthusiasm with the student body — whether that means ensuring that individuals’ opinions are heard, designing an intriguing layout or reviewing the local music scene. And in my case, that simple fact makes it easier to work through problems and to face criticism.

In a compilation of some of his best essays, Kurt Vonnegut laid out a set of guidelines for how to go about writing. Like so much of what Vonnegut does, these principles are not entirely limited to writing. I like the first one, in particular: Find a subject you care about.

Finally, I can cross something off my list — mission accomplished.

Hilfinger is a member of
the class of 2010.