This is it.
After 147 issues with my name at the top of the masthead, I'm done. And although I am thrilled about what I will be doing next year, it will be exceptionally difficult to leave this place. I can't imagine having done anything more powerful with my 21st year of life, and I have a tough time imagining my 22nd without the Chapel bells and budget at 5:00.
But in a few short weeks, I'll be far away from these offices, and, appropriately, not welcome back to 301 Flowers until Kate and the rest of the 95th volume have made it on their own.
So what is an editor to do after her time is up? My answers of late have been lofty but light on specifics. "I'll have some time to become creative again," I say, or, "I'll get a chance to figure out who I've become after my year as editor." To staff members who are well aware of what two years worth of 75-hour work weeks can do to the soul, these answers probably make sense.
But there's still the more practical question of how I'll spend my time. I know at least one specific. In a month, I will be in Florence, and at some point during my stay, I will make my way to the Museo dell'Opera del Cuomo to take a look at Donatello's The Prophet, dated 1423 to 1425. Better known as the Zuccone-which, believe it or not, means pumpkin head-this statue was the very first to shed the ornate costume, scroll and deity-like, idealized features of pre-Renaissance art for true humanist values. Donatello reportedly conceived of the new human ideal by studying actual personalities. The result was a figure in tattered robes with weathered skin and a strong, calm expression reflecting his robust life spent creating and reworking, trying and at times failing.
Interested in the idea of the Zuccone when I first studied it in my freshman year, I thought I'd claim it as my own by making it my column title. I'd figured I'd write essays under a cryptic column name. Wouldn't that be neat?
It was.
But more significantly, the concept took on new dimensions as my lived experience revealed to me what I find most compelling in life. Hard work, constancy, intelligence, joviality, charisma-these ideals are just ideals until it's four o'clock in the morning, the printer is on the fritz, you haven't slept since six the morning before and all eyes are on you to set the mood. On the fourth iteration of the same problem, will you address it with grace, or you will snap? After a spat over drawing the front page, will you enter an editorial board meeting with the disagreement fresh on your mind, or will you naturally recall the deep respect you maintain for all involved? The more time I've spent in these offices, the more consistent my answers have become.
But more than the personal questions, the Zuccone reminds me of how compelling it is to be able to share with 15,000 readers every day the best the staff was able to do-which is different from the best it knows how to do-in a single, 16-hour workday.
The statue is also a reminder to me of the toughest thing about the job of editor-handling the fact that, for the first time in your life, you have the power to create an environment that is consistent with your ideals yet are unable to realize them in full, for no reason other than your own shortcomings. For me, that shortcoming is time. I want The Chronicle to be a place where everyone finds new value in themselves, but I've often found myself too caught up in other necessary projects to take the small steps continually required to sustain such an environment.
I only hope that, as I invest myself in my post-graduate life, I will find fodder equally as powerful as what I've come to love at The Chronicle-and at Duke. First and foremost, I am an institutionalist, and while my position prevented me from becoming involved in any direct efforts to improve Duke-the journalist cannot get involved in her coverage-I am devoted to this university.
At 36 pages, this final issue of the 94th volume will not close until 5 a.m. or later tonight. By 10:30 a.m., I'll be up and at my final Duke class. This is the right way to close-in a mode similar to those first, incredibly tense days of daily production, although I know this finale won't manage to rival their excitement. I'm not sure what in my future will. But that is okay. With ink in my blood and many thanks in my heart, I'll be ready to walk to "Pomp and Circumstance" in a few weeks. Then, Florence.
Jessica Moulton is a Trinity senior and editor of The Chronicle. Like her predecessors, she aches with the knowledge that she will never again be either.
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