Leslie Yeh: Leaving a legacy while daily experiences remain

Every layout I design starts as a blank page in my unlined notebook. But finally sitting down staring at yet another blank page, I had a difficult time finding the words to start this column. I was at a loss, despite the dozens of ledes that have been marinating in my mind since I found out about this tradition what feels like a lifetime ago.

Perhaps it is because it feels premature. Perhaps because this is not the end I expected. Fixated on the finality of this column, I found myself lost at the end of an unfinished story.

But every end has a beginning, and mine began on a hot August afternoon in 2009. Thinking back, I wouldn’t be signing off today if I hadn’t fought the urge to leave that first day of yearbook class.

It felt natural for me to apply for Daily Bruin fall quarter freshman year, as something to do while shopping around for other extracurriculars. I never imagined I would stay on to join a Pacemaker award-winning editor team.

As a designer, I never got that rush of excitement seeing my name printed for the first time. I wouldn’t be able to pick out my first design from a stack of issues, even if there were only two to choose from. The first time my name was printed was in Graduation Issue two years ago, which I typed out in 7-point font buried among dozens of others in the staff box.

Nevertheless, before long, I was willingly imprisoning myself in this mid-campus castle’s dungeon full of familiar faces and familiar chaos that I simultaneously loved and hated. It was a real, unromanticized family filled with drama and tension, which was inevitable considering the sheer amount of time spent together. But now, the familiarity is fading away as fresh new faces start their journey, and a part of me envies their passionate enthusiasm.

The beauty of the Daily Bruin is that everything is passed down from editor to intern, year after year. As we hand over the publication each generation, things change, but our investment lives on, a part of the bigger Bruin legacy.

I hope that someday decades from now, an intern will unearth a lingering copy of prime, flip through the yellowing pages and find something to be inspired by.

But while our legacy is left for others to discover, it is the daily experience that I will take with me.

For the past years, the newsroom has been a haven. At such a large and competitive school, it’s comforting to have a place where I felt competent and confident, surrounded by inspirational people, always motivating me to be more informed, more eloquent, more cultured.

It’s true, I gave up a lot for this publication: countless hours of sleep, a chunk of my GPA, my sanity and probably a few years of my life from breathing the Kerckhoff dust. But I gained more: the ability to eyeball a pica, to hand model, to create last-minute illustrations, to function under the stress of a perpetual group project and of course, the friends who shared long nights waiting for a job that hardly pays to pay off. Standing at the end of this road, I realize that while not joining Daily Bruin would have probably made my college experience easier, it wouldn’t be my college experience without it.

As I finish these last grafs, I already feel bitterness fading into a sweet aftertaste. I won’t remember the Daily Bruin by the articles I wrote, the layouts I designed or this final column. Someday, I might even think of money before meetings when someone says “budget,” though I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stand the smell of Panda Express.

In 30 years, I will remember the trivial memories: stopping by Din Tai Fung on the way to retreat, staring deliriously at the newspapers covering the ceiling during late-run shifts, sending the editor in chief puppy GIFs at 5 a.m. during Registration Issue production, conducting phone interviews in the Trader Joe’s parking lot and setting off the alarm while running into a Sunday budget meeting late.

In the end, as cliched as it sounds, I’ll remember Daily Bruin by the people. In 30 years, most of us will likely be out of touch. But I know that wherever we are and whatever we end up being – doctors, lawyers and perhaps even the occasional journalist – we can all think back and remember the days we sat in a stuffy room and made a newspaper because we could. And despite the countless times we felt demoralized, disheartened and disenchanted, we were damn good at it.

These are the glory days I will take with me.

Yeh was prime art director from 2014-2015, assistant Design director from 2013-2014 and a Design contributor from 2012-2013.