Dear Mirjam:
If only you could see me now.
I graduated winter term, and stayed with my mom in Portland for a couple months. Last Monday, I started interning for The Bend Bulletin, and soon I’ll mail out my first job applications.
But, on the brink of my adult life, here I am, back at the ODE newsroom.
I’m sitting in the production office on Sunday afternoon, where I can’t hear the newsroom chatter, or other keyboards clicking, or phones ringing, or play-by-play from the Mariners’ game.
Back here, it’s just me, my thoughts and this column. This “Pez Sez.”
My last one.
I still can’t believe that it’s over. In my three years at the Emerald, I wrote hundreds of stories and conducted approximately one thousand interviews. Not to mention all the Game Day supplements, sports events and near-disasters on deadline. Unbelievable.
And then there were all the hardships I faced. Like that last-chance interview I had with The Oregonian — the internship I’d sought all through college — only to be turned down, because I wasn’t “focused” enough.
Since handing over that scantron sheet in my last final exam, I did what I could to keep writing. I wrote freelance stories for a couple of newspapers around Portland, and now I’ve got my summer internship going. Unlike my college days, I’ve had plenty of time to run, work out and sleep. Heck, I even have enough money for three meals a day.
Mirjam, you graduated a couple years ago. Tell me, will life ever hold as much discovery as the last four years did? Will any home be as confiding as the off-white walls of this newsroom?
I hope life does, and I hope some place will.
For now, though, it’s on to the great wide open. College made me strong, but the Emerald made me stronger. Whatever comes my way, I know I’m ready to handle it.
It’s like Register-Guard sports columnist Ron Bellamy once wrote: “It’s a funny thing about destiny. Sometimes it taps you on the shoulder, ready or not, and says: ‘Now’s the time. Now’s your chance. Take your best shot.’”
Wish me luck, ’cause here I go.
-Pez