It is June – and if the poets are right, I ought to be tired of being brave.

Perhaps that reads at odds with the headline of what is my final byline, but I’m unusually at a loss for words. “Sad is the man who is asked for a story / and can’t come up with one,” Li-Young Lee says. Perhaps that makes me a sad person. I can’t say I’m not.

I can say, however, that I am not someone readily characterized as brave, and when I approached my first byline in 2022, I was determined to stick with what I knew. I came, naively, to write about the science I loved and the Asian American communities I felt compelled to explore. The rest of it – well, like one of my favorite poems asks, “Do I dare?”

And I did write about scientists. It was the bird migration researchers and the pandemic prediction algorithm builders whose stories filled my days. I found Asian American stories alongside them, from Chinatown murals to a vigil for those who died under Chinese COVID-19 policies. I took some detours at 3 a.m. to peer around a bakery and for 48 hours to capture women’s water polo heartbreak in Indianapolis.

But as I grew up in the Daily Bruin and the bylines accumulated, my own stories – of being Chinese American, of being a scientist – began to demand being addressed, too. Those stories include grainy videos of 80-something-year-olds at karaoke and a garage in Oxnard, California. They include scarfing down spicy snacks in an attempt to focus before a breaking story could arrive at my desk.

My stories also include April 30, 2024. That was the date of the attack on the Palestine solidarity encampment. That was the first time I tasted tear gas. It was also the first time I had someone from a national news outlet ask me, “You’re science and health editor. Are you sure you’re qualified to speak about what happened?”

There are many things about those days and nights I cannot recall and have not recovered from. But I remember the indignation I felt for myself, our newsroom, our sources and our readers, and I remember I said “yes.”

I call it indignation, but perhaps the better word is duty. I don’t pretend to have lived up to that duty every day by any means. I learned early on in my editorial tenure what it means to be accused of bias and false equivalency, and I learned just how much some media outlets are capable of misrepresenting the truth.

I learned what it means to have to set standards for coverage and style while realizing that the world’s most eminent outlets have little more to offer than a 20-year-old can muster. I learned what it means to have the choices you spent hours agonizing over immediately slammed from inside and out.

I also learned what people have to say about the Daily Bruin: It is biased against people of color. It has issues with bullying.

And, well, if you think any of these things – you’re not totally wrong. I had to learn these truths firsthand. I say that with neither pride nor shame but rather as a fact. Media is not perfect, and student journalism certainly isn’t.

But what I have come to decide is that something being imperfect isn’t an excuse to throw our hands in the air. It’s a tenet of journalism that we hold power to account – and that starts from inside.

It is a brave thing to not just see what can be wrong but to then decide to change it – just as there is cowardice in lambasting another without giving a second thought to your own imperfections, or throwing a tantrum or simply doing nothing.

It is a brave thing to persist when nobody else thinks you will or wants you to. It is a brave thing to hold your ground for the readers. It is the bravest, at other times, to admit that you could be wrong. At times, I was maybe even stupidly brave – like the time I applied for editor in chief, in a way that broke at least 14 years of precedent, because I thought I could make a change.

I have been entrusted with the responsibility of carrying some of the most important stories of the past four years to our audiences. But I believe we owe that same sense of duty to every story we tell.

Disseminating science in a time where some have every intention to block that knowledge is a kind of bravery, and refusing to publish a story whose underlying sentiment is offensive is yet another. Bravery isn’t just about the fires or the visa revocations but about how each of us stands up for what we believe every day – “to thine own self be true,” as Polonius says.

Of course, I would not have the bravery I do if I did not receive infinitely larger amounts of love. Among the people I am so lucky to have earned the respect of: Leydi Cris – who saw the best in me, even when I was not always able to offer it, and stayed. Dylan – who had faith in me when I didn’t know how to or couldn’t; I don’t want to know the journalist and person I’d be without you.

You would think that after everything, I’d be a pessimist. But I think back to what we are capable of for our community – on April 30, election night and beyond – and I could never regret it.

To those of you who might be reading this and thinking, “Is the Daily Bruin for me?” – make it yours. We are an institution of learning, and that means we can and should be made uncomfortable. If you reject us, how can you hold power accountable if you can’t even look it in the eye?

Journalism has power – so bring what you have to Kerckhoff 118 and put it to work. As the poet Mahmoud Darwish says: “Don’t believe our outlines, forget them / and begin from your own words.”

This story – of learning to be brave – is the best I have come up with. I dare, now, to hope that the outlines of the future will be better than mine because of what I have done.

My name is Anna Dai-Liu, and I have been a reporter for the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper. Thank you for letting me be a custodian of your stories – and thank you, now, for being a brief keeper of mine.

Dai-Liu was a slot editor, News senior staff, Photo staff and PRIME contributor 2024-2025; science and health editor 2023-2024; Copy contributor and staff 2022-2024; and a News contributor, reporter and staff 2022-2023.