Calvin Lau: _Copy editor’s hoarded newspaper memories jump off the page_

In my room back home sits a box full of personal mementos ““ my crown from my high school senior ball, a Diddy Riese tin can filled with trinkets I collected my first year of college, a blue packet bursting at the seams with pamphlets, tickets and receipts I accumulated while studying abroad.

In my room in my apartment sits an embarrassingly large pile of Daily Bruin newspapers.

I’m a bit of a collector, you see (or a hoarder, depending on who’s asking). On occasion, I like to go through my old belongings and admire them, fondly recalling these memories from the past.

I do this with the newspapers I’ve stored up, too.

I can recall a unique memory from every one of them: that night I forgot to check the blues and watched as my friend completely re-designed a page at 1:30 in the morning; that time when I thought up the perfect headline that fit the space just right; that issue for our undergraduate election, a night when I finally plopped down on my bed at 4 a.m. after an entire newsroom pulled together to create some truly amazing content.

What my stash of papers won’t tell me is all the other times I spent with my friends, both in and out of that windowless, unreasonably warm place known as the Daily Bruin office.

Like all those nights my friends and I, exhausted after finally sending the layouts to pagination, simply sat around and talked about life and the scary prospect of growing up as we waited for the call from the printer.

Or the moment I ceased to be the token male slot editor and instead became a fellow small Asian girl in Copy’s coterie.

And the occasions spent bonding outside the office ““ the retreats, the feasts and (oh, yes) all of the parties ““ there’s no single item that can encapsulate the joy I felt from those experiences.

The articles printed in these issues don’t tell the whole story. They don’t reveal the stress involved with daily production, the pride I feel when I see someone pick up the paper or all the laughter that takes place in Kerckhoff 118.

I’ve amassed so many copies of the Daily Bruin, but all the fun times I’ve had in the office can’t be depicted on a dozen pages, no matter how many papers we print.

And that’s the beauty of it ““ all the highs and lows of my life, they can’t be summarized by any material item, whether it’s a box full of guides and brochures or a mountain of newspapers.

These memories go beyond the page, shared in part by all my friends and stored forever in my mind.

I like to keep and preserve objects that signify big moments in my life. For this past year, no number of items could have captured my happiness of being an editor at the Daily Bruin.

Lau was a slot editor from 2011-2012, a copy staffer from 2010-2011, and a copy contributor from 2009-2010.