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.

If you would have told first-year me that four years later I would be assuming roles of opinion editor, assistant manager and full-time student, I would have laughed and thought you were lying. But I wouldn’t change a thing about how these last four years of college have gone.

I remember being a freshman during move-in week, getting my first copy of The Collegian and reading out Bella Eckburg’s bio on the phone to my parents, knowing that that was who I would work under as soon as I was able to complete my training and join The Collegian. Joining this paper was the first thing I knew I had to do after I moved in and got comfortable at Colorado State University because I knew more than anything that I wanted to keep writing and sharing my opinions with the world.

But that quickly halted during my first meeting, where I sat in Ramskeller with the opinion desk and couldn’t come up with a single idea. I was so excited and so nervous to join, but I couldn’t think of anything clearly because I had just withdrawn from my first class and was going through an internal crisis of thinking that maybe CSU wasn’t where I wanted to be anymore. I remember sitting there unsure while Eckburg and fellow opinion editor at the time Cody Cooke asked me questions about what I was experiencing and how my first year was going. The second I mentioned that I had just withdrawn from a class because the professor racially profiled me, they asked me to build on it more, and that had ignited the fire in me once again to continue to use my writing as an outlet.

I wrote about almost everything I could think of for about a year and a half straight before taking a step back and falling into a slump my second year. The writing had stopped, and I was unsure again — unsure of myself. But as I began writing again in my second semester of my second year, I remember seeing the job posting for opinion editor go up and wondering if I truly had the qualifications to do the job.

I fought with my mind nearly the whole time the job was posted. I had conversation after conversation with my mom about how I may have been good enough to do it, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. Then a Slack message from Allie Seibel alerted my phone, encouraging me to apply and saying I had the endorsement of my current editorial staff. That one message changed the course of my career with The Collegian entirely.

I came into this role maybe promising more than I could give, but I knew I had the opportunity to change the desk by encouraging people to lean into their controversial opinions. I also wanted to take the opportunity to diversify the desk, hoping that I could be a person who our reporters of color could look at for reassurance that they didn’t need to sell themselves short. I wanted to create a community within the individual desk while I found my own community with the editorial staff.

Those connections have been built, and if I am being honest, that makes it harder for me to know that I am leaving The Collegian and won’t be easily writing stories for publication about the decisions CSU makes and the political issues plaguing our world. But the biggest challenge is leaving the people and community that I have built with my reporters and the editors.

If you told the scared and confused freshman me that I would be where I am now — a guru for other first-years, as my reporters called me the other day — I wouldn’t have believed it. But I owe it to myself to not see leaving The Collegian as a loss but as a step toward growing into the person I have become. And I owe that to the challenges, what I have learned and the people who I have been able to meet at this paper. So it is goodbye for now, and hello to my future.

Dominique Lopez was the 2024-25 opinion editor of The Rocky Mountain Collegian. She can no longer be reached at letters@collegian.com, but she can be reached on Twitter @caffeinateddee6.