It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday. I’ve already been awake for several hours; no matter how late I fall asleep, my body has never allowed me to wake up anytime after the birds outside my window begin their harmonies. The next few hours would be the only time in my schedule to crank out the From The Desk I’ve been assigned for the upcoming issue.
For the uninitiated, From The Desk is a weekly column written by a Ram staff member. Usually, topics are uncategorizable, but for the e-board who are writing their final column, it’s tradition to reflect on your time at The Fordham Ram from the perspective of its nearing end. This version of my final From The Desk is closer to my fourth re-write.
I wasn’t satisfied with simply spilling out a reflection and calling it a night; I wanted to try something more experimental. The first draft was something of long-form poetry, the second draft was a meta fictitious “unpublished” letter and the third draft was closer to a short horror story. None of these felt right. There’s a time and place for experimentation, and while it might be the right time, it is most certainly not the right place.
In fact, it’s been difficult not to reflect on my time at the Ram.
In just a few weeks, I’ll be liberated from my position as a Fordham University student. The timing coincides exactly with when I’ll have to hang up my Managing Editor sweatshirt. The tie between my standard studenthood and my involvement in the Ram has always been. I was a freshman for less than a month when I got involved in the newspaper.
I started as a copy editor. I wasn’t very good, and I didn’t intend to copy-edit for very long; for some reason, it was the only Ram email address I could find, and I used it to get into contact with then-News Editor Sarah Huffman. By the end of the week, I was staring at a very heavily-copy edited version of my first article. Really, it was my consistency as a research columnist that led me to be Assistant News Editor for Volume 103.
It’s worth noting that this is when I met Isabel Danzis, our Editor in Chief. We were co-Assistant News Editors in Volume 103, and it was clear to me even then, in 2021, that she would lead the newspaper by Volume 105. There aren’t words to describe how admirable and inspirational it has been to work beside her for nearly three years.
It wasn’t until halfway through Volume 103 that I first stepped foot in B-52, the Ram’s office. I didn’t realize then how important the room would be to my life; every Sunday and Tuesday of every week after that first crossing of the threshold, I would find myself there. Through all its seemingly supernatural properties, tucked away from the rest of the world and able to manipulate time, stretching minutes into hours and hours into seconds, I’ve always been able to count on finding my way back every week. Since then, the Ram has remained a reassuring constant in my life, no matter what role I fit into. It has been inextricably tangled with my life — personal, academic and professional.
Every Wednesday, I deliver the invoices from our Mondays and Tuesdays nights’ Pugsley haul to the OSI office on the second floor of the McShane Campus Center. Today, it’s where the caf has been temporarily relocated. Still, all I can see is the sporadic assignment of tables and chairs that defined the second floor of the McGinley Student Center during the hybrid year. In the corner, behind the flooded floor of hundreds of students with nowhere else to go during the winter months, I see myself surrounded by Volume 103’s e-board, breaking the news that I could be transferring to NYU at the start of the next semester (I realize now that I probably should’ve mentioned that sooner). Without fail, it brings a chill to my spine.
These chills are also constant. The blankets on Eddie’s, the illuminated pathway of the Queen’s Court courtyard, the red checkerboard interior of my apartment building. Remnants of the past that can’t disappear.
The ghosts remind me that my years at Fordham (and, thusly, on the Ram) have been the longest I’ve spent in the same place since 2010. By the end of my second year, I was already starting to feel the weight become unbearable. I didn’t find a place where I felt like I was truly comfortable, but proving to myself that the weight couldn’t crush me was far more important.
The way I worded that makes it sound like my time here has been a miserable slog — for the most part, it hasn’t. As difficult as parts of it may have been, I’m satisfied by the way the past three years of my life have unraveled before me. Some of the happiest moments of my life would not have happened without Fordham. Still, I’m glad my time here is coming to a close.
I feel as though my organs are rapidly decaying, my back still aches, each day gets cloudier and proximity to the ghosts that haunt me makes each night colder. I’m ready to move on. Still, I won’t readily forget the spirit of my college experience. Each memory, good or bad, enlightening or oppressive, will carry me forward. I’m ready to leave, I’m ready to look back and reminisce.
To be the only warm body amongst a sea of silent spirits — you’d feel the heat draw away into the ground, too.
And when you’ll watch the sunrise from the other side of the river, the wind will drift over the pier and deliver the memories. You’ll remember how you used to feel the vibrations in their voice, how her hands could never sit still, how his eyes never found a place to rest. Your foot will reach that new cold spot at the edge of the bed.
It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday. I’ve already been awake for several hours, and I will be awake for several more.
