Change.

It seems to be the only constant at all anymore. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad and sometimes it has a funny way of working.

The end of the semester is near, and for some of us it means the end of our time at Lethbridge College. That in itself is both petrifying and exhilarating.

The chaotic times have started. These next two months involve working diligently on the newspaper, producing the Expressions magazine and preparing for the practicum all the while throwing resumes out to potential employers near and far.

College has been one huge learning experience and as this chapter of life slowly comes to a close, it is also a time of reflection and nostalgia. Many of us have gone from working dead-end jobs to planning a future career that we’ll hopefully stay passionate for and shine through.

It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve realized how big this world really is. It also hasn’t been now that I’ve realized the friends I’ve made and what they’ve taught me. I look back at the last two years and it with some bittersweet sadness that I know we’ll all be going off to the great land of newspapers and broadcasting and advertising. I can see a lot of my classmates going incredibly far in their careers.

They’ll be the ones I remember most. As with any program in post-secondary school, you don’t spend a few years with the same crowd and not meet people you’ll remember forever. I’ve made the greatest friends at this college and had the most memorable times.

I’m sitting here trying to think of something to say for each individual, but each person is so unique, beautiful and original that I don’t even know where to start and yet there is no way to generalize everyone in this program. What I can say is this: in spite of the people from high school I no longer talk to, my college friends have changed my whole perception on humanity and just how wonderful people can be.

I graduated from a small town where cliques were formed long before I got there in Grade 7. It was hard to fit in, hard to make friends and the friends I did have became two-faced and turned into totally different people as time went on. I left high school with maybe one friend remaining and even then we became more like strangers. She married, had a kid, and moved on. In my nomadic spirit, I drifted out to the West Coast and back, and am about to leave again soon.

The day I entered the college doors for orientation day was what changed everything. I’ll never forget the first friend I met here. She wasn’t in Communication Arts, but she was sitting behind me at the Rick Campanelli speech and tapped me on the shoulder and introduced herself. Today, she’s one of my best friends. She’s a Mormon and I’m a hippie but somehow it works. She’s also the co-writer of the novel that we are convinced will propel us to immense fame.

Since then, I have been surrounded by some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. The friends I have made have shined a new light on the world for me. I have a gay friend who has shown me that it is alright to be yourself. I never realized the certain kind of courage it takes to be just that. I admire how open he is about himself. People like him are truly the inspirational ones, the kind who will blare Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” for you to make you feel better after you’ve had a rotten day.  

Then there’s the girl who had a locker beside me for our whole first year and who is now also one of my best friends. She may not realize just how talented she is at what she does, but that’s part of how unique she is. Sometimes the most brilliant gems are the hidden ones.

And how could I forget the other five crazy print journalism majors I see every morning and say bye to every afternoon? If we’ve seen way too much of each other this year, it shows more in how much we can laugh at ourselves and each other than it does anything else. And as much as we don’t want to admit, we find the awful puns of our instructor hilarious.

Putting together the Endeavour has its stressful moments but I don’t think we’ve had one feud this year. I’m going to miss every one of them but I expect to see them somewhere down the road (or as the running joke goes, one of us will be hiring another…)

I never thought I’d say that there would be something here in Lethbridge that I would actually miss but I know that when convocation is all over in April and the job offers come and everyone goes home, it’s going to be a bit like a closing curtain on a crazy, wonderful, memorable circus that we’ll all remember as Comm Arts 2011.