In the span of just a semester working at The Courier, it feels like I have lived a lifetime. The Courier is no doubt, a living, breathing thing that has always pulled me into its paper arms and towards some of the people who matter the most to me in my life. Let me explain.

I remember vividly the first time I went to The Courier’s office. I had printed out a few copies of my resume and carefully placed them in a folder in my backpack. I knocked on the door and waited until a scraggly bearded journalist opened the door.

“Hi!” he said with a look of surprise on his face. I could tell not a lot of new people came in by his surprise. As I introduced myself and walked in, I noticed a cute girl pop her head out from around her cubicle. I paused for a half second until I remembered that I had to focus on what I was doing. More and more journalists popped out of their humble cubicles to see the commotion.

That scraggly journalist told me his name was Lucas, the editor-in-chief, and said he’d get back to me soon. I was confident, but a little reluctant to get the job. The idea of not getting it felt good at a distance because it would be one less thing I’d have to do. However, as soon as I got Lucas’ email that all proved to be false. I hadn’t gotten the job, and I grew strangely angry. They had chosen someone else over me, and I developed a hatred for the Courier.

A few days went on. That casual newspaper I’d occasionally skim through, I now turned my nose up to. However, not too long after that Lucas emailed me again. The person that had gotten the job could no longer participate, and now they had come crawling back to me. “No way,” I thought, “Now you want me? Tough shit.”

But something urged me to accept. Maybe it was my mother’s good manners and common sense she had instilled in me, but I truly feel like it was the future pulling me down its predetermined path. This was something life itself had planned for me that I had been rejecting. I inevitably accepted. My angered dropped into a smile, “Goddammit.” I laughed to myself. I  accepted Lucas’s offer.

Only until now have I discovered that the Courier itself pulled me into it’s path. The Courier has a strange way of changing people’s lives. Everyone who has ever worked there leaves with a story or two. The more time people spend there, the more their hearts become attached. People come for the writing, but always leave with the memories, and I am no stranger to that. I fell into a deep love for the Courier, and an equal love for the people who worked there. The Courier just has that effect on people. It’s absolutely inescapable. But the Courier and the  journalists that work there are just as dangerous as they are loving, and some people don’t make it out alive. Some are swallowed by their own home and don’t realize it until they’re shit back out into the real world.

However, I didn’t know any of that when I first got there. I went into my first meeting the last week of the fall semester and got a taste of what it was like. I quickly learned all of my preconceptions that the Courier would be a strictly business workplace were gigantically false. The meetings quickly turned from a business into something closer to a bar. This place didn’t feel like work, it felt like home, and even stranger, it felt like a home I had always been a part of. I felt everyone’s love for each other in that office. It reminded me of the love I feel with my family on Christmas morning.

Every week my friendships grew with the people I had met in that office, and every week my writing got a little bit better. But to be totally honest, compared to the people I couldn’t give a shit about the writing. The people I’ve met at the Courier mean the world to me, and I wouldn’t trade the memories I’ve made through this paper for anything. Truly, through the Courier I’ve experienced the best days of my life, and some of the worst. I’ve felt love, and I’ve felt heartbreak, but everyone I’ve met there, including the people who didn’t even work there anymore, turned me into a better person. I have no doubt in my mind that the Courier has changed the very course of my life, all because of the people and the living entity that resides in that quiet but magical office. The Courier, with its strange ways of love and hate inevitably turn weak men into strong men, and bad writers into great writers.

The Courier is something I’ll never forget. I was lucky enough that the Courier pulled me in before I could mistakenly escape. I think about the memories I’ve made every day as I forge new ones while I still can, because at the end of the semester, this will all end. Just like life does, one has to seize the moments that are best in life. It has felt like I have lived a lifetime at the Courier.

Don’t be drowned in the darkness of synonymous life. Don’t grow comfortable living a false life, living a dead man’s future.

Do not die already, for you have barely lived. Live now, for you will die forever.