Bye Bye, Mikey: Moving Up and Moving On

I’m not a writer. I never was. Honestly, I’ve always hated writing. I’m a logical person, and at no point in my life did I find joy in creatively putting my thoughts to paper. Although I’m graduating with a journalism degree, I had no intentions of studying it when I came to SUNY New Paltz, instead seeking a digital media production degree. 

I was lucky enough to make strong connections in my first semester, leading to me moving off-campus with some friends in my second year. While awesome, the extra space and freedom my apartment gave me created a disconnect from the campus community I had spent the last year integrating myself into. All of a sudden, the place where I spent all my time eating, socializing and sleeping just became the place where I went to class. 

During this time, my academic prospects also took a turn. I found myself getting frustrated with the technology I had to use in my classes and surprisingly enjoying the writing I had to do more. I realized that maybe my major wasn’t right for me and changed it to journalism. 

Throughout my sophomore year and the first half of my junior year, I went through school on autopilot. I was fine, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was wasting the little time I had at New Paltz sitting at home. 

Then, one day last November, a friend from one of my classes, Dylan, mentioned that the school’s student newspaper needed writers. Hesitantly, I agreed to give it a trial run, assuming I would quit at the end of the semester. Instead, joining The Oracle ended up being one of the most academic and socially fulfilling acts of my life. 

Suddenly, I felt at home on campus again. I actually had a reason to go to the Student Union Building, and meeting new people and being a part of a club felt wonderful. Existing in the presence of my hilariously weird Oracle peers became my window into the college world I prematurely left.  

And more important than all of that, I fell in love with journalism. Before The Oracle, I was enjoying my classes but didn’t feel strongly about them. It was only after experiencing the closest thing I could to the realities of journalism — shorter deadlines, late-night copy editing sessions and stressful interviews — that I realized how honorable and important the field is to society. Being someone who is half Turkish and has seen first-hand the harsh limitations on freedom of speech in Turkey, being a cog, albeit a small one, in the much more free American journalism system was liberating. 

This past summer, circumstances in my life made me realize that journalism isn’t the best career for me. In trying to find another career this semester, I’ve juggled a full class load, the student newspaper, extracurricular computer science classes and law school studying, and while succeeding, sacrificed my mental health in the process. For this reason, I’ve had to make the difficult decision to prematurely leave The Oracle. 

To my fellow copy editors, who I won’t name for the sake of the word count, keep doing the amazing work that I’ve witnessed you doing for the past year. To Dylan, thank you for changing my life and recommending that I join The Oracle. And to Zoe and Jeremy, thank you for being the most hardworking, approachable and genuinely kind editors-in-chief I could ever hope to work for.