Editor’s Note: Traditionally, graduating seniors working at The Collegian are given the chance to write a farewell note at the end of their tenure at CSU.

I’ve been sitting in front of my computer thinking of what The Collegian has meant to me throughout my college career, and the same unavoidable answer keeps coming to mind: The Collegian has been my most significant relationship. Accordingly, I felt the most appropriate way for me to fill this column is to treat it as my breakup letter. 

So brace yourself. 

Dear Collegian, 

I want to start this by saying how much I love you and how much I appreciate the last four years we’ve spent together. You gave me a home away from home when I moved here and needed one most. 

I’ve grown with you as you have grown with me. When I met you, you were published two times per week with a sidebar on the cover, and I was a confused blond first-year living in the dorms. Then the pandemic happened, and you were one of the few consistent and reliable places for me to go when everything else felt chaotic.

Those trying times tested our commitment, and I wavered. I ran away from you to focus on myself to feel like I had my life under control again. But even when we took that break to work on ourselves, we found our way back to each other and have been stronger than ever since. 

I want you to know that it’s not you — it’s me. I don’t want you to think this was all for nothing.

You’ve taught me what I do and don’t want for myself in the future. I don’t want to have to choose between you and my social life; I want to have Wednesdays to myself again, and I wish you understood the expectation of being in constant communication with you feels like I’m being smothered, and clingy has never been a good look on you. 

But your friends became my own, just as mine became yours. I hope it’s not too weird, but I want us both to stay close to them even when we’re not together. They had just as much of a role in your development as me, and truth be told, they were often the only reason I stayed with you for as long as I did. 

You were my only newspaper. But you’ve had countless photo directors before me, so I know you’ll move on and be fine come August. Normally, I’d be upset by the fact that you already have my replacement picked out, but I know Milo Gladstein and Garrett Mogel will take better care of you than I ever could have.

I just find it funny that the photographers you always told me not to worry about are already lined up to replace me.

You know what they say: “If you love something, let it go.”

But Taylor Swift says it best in our self-proclaimed breakup anthem: “It hits different ‘cause it’s you.”

Eternally grateful,

Lucy

Lucy Morantz was the 2022-23 co-photo director of The Rocky Mountain Collegian. She can no longer be reached at photo@collegian.com but can be on Instagram @lucymorantz.jpg.