Senior Goodbye: Brandon Moyse | No time for reminiscing

I shouldn’t really be writing this column, in between not being a DP staffer for over a year and making the path to graduation into a Homeric epic. But here I am.

I finished most of this just before spring break and decided to sit on it, waiting to see if my feelings would change.

They haven’t.

You’ve been subjected to a few of these senior columns already, and I’m sure that many pages in this issue will similarly be filled either with people talking about the DP and what it meant to them and how they’ll miss it so much, or imparting advice from perspectives and wisdom they don’t have. (There’s also the ever-popular third type of senior goodbye, which comprises long “thank you” letters and inside jokes.)

I won’t do any of that. Instead, I’m going to do what I do best: Talk about whatever I want. Not because I think I have that much advice to offer you (I don’t), but mostly because it gives me satisfaction to get up on a soapbox. I write because I can.

But first, I need to give credit where it's due. Working here was a tremendous opportunity — a genuine privilege — and one I wouldn’t trade for the world (or even a GPA with a three-handle on it). As I told my successors at the DP, working here is about as important as any of us will be for a long time. No sane person would leave any fresh-out-of-college graduate in charge of dozens, or even hundreds, of employees.

That said, as I would sit with my fellow ex-editors over beer or Chinese food, the conversation would inevitably drift toward the DP. I was struck by one thought: I’m 22 years old, and already I’m stuck so much on something I used to do. This is downright depressing.

Don’t I have a whole life to which I can look forward?

These last four years may have been the most carefree, fun years of our lives, but they’re not the best ones — at least I hope not. I look around and see everybody sad about graduating, and on the one hand, I can empathize. After all, school is all we’ve known our whole lives. Now we’re being thrust into the great unknown.

At the same time, there’s not much we can do about it. We’ve known since Day One that eventually this ride would end. The reality that our time at Penn is ending is not under our control, but the fact remains that the rest of our lives still are. There’s no point being sad, bittersweet or fearful.

You know those friends from back home you see every so often, and it seems as if they’re still stuck in high school because that was the high point of their lives? It’s pathetic. You shouldn’t be the same person you were four years ago, and in four years, you shouldn’t be the same person you are today.

My DP experience can best be characterized by disappointment. Well, that may be going a little far, but in reflecting on my time here, I remembered the only reason I joined the paper was in the hope of one day covering the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. From there, I just went along for the ride, but I never got to where I originally set out (thanks a lot, Glen Miller). The point is, our lives will take us great places as long as we let them, even if they’re not the places we thought they’d be.

I hate to steal lines from movies (okay, who am I kidding? I love it), but as George Clooney said in Up in the Air: “We are not swans. We’re sharks.” We always need to keep moving, with our heads up and looking forward. Otherwise, what’s the point?

BRANDON MOYSE is a 2010 College graduate from Montreal and a former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He can be contacted at bmoyse@sas.upenn.edu. Brandon has accepted a job offer in investment banking in The Great White North.

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