Evan, it feels like this whole “higher education” thing is taking forever. Is it ever going to be over? Is it even worth it?

It’ll only feel like forever until you’re two weeks away from graduation and you have three giant papers due. Time will just fly by then. It will be over, eventually.

I graduated from Grand Junction High School in 2009 with a 1.9 GPA. The only college program that would accept me was a 2-year program at then Mesa State College. Aside from maintaining the grades to transfer to a four-year Mass Communication degree in those first couple years, Mesa State College managed to outgrow itself (and those lockers in Houston Hall) into the very hip and modern Colorado Mesa University. I had the unique opportunity to simultaneously grow with this institution.

During the five years that I’ve been here, I’ve watched an almost nonexistent student life burgeon into a multi-disciplinary campus community complete with office politics and endless bureaucracy—these of course being pinnacles of the modern American educative process. As the Outdoor Program blew people’s minds on admirably minimalist excursions, PAC drove home the impact of a Macklemore-sized ego and the heartwarming satisfaction of making a custom button for your backpack. All the while, the Criterion grew from a six-page tabloid with choppy cutouts to the 12-pageish broadsheet powerhouse that Editor-in-chief Levi Meyer and I (colloquially Linkvi Evmeyer) have been so proud to helm.

In the top corner of the Fine Arts building holding the Mass Comm department, I was happily secluded, writing and learning the ins and outs of media law and how to make a Tweet really, really impactful. My hopes of only scooting across campus to go to the Crite office were squandered when I was recruited to represent the Media Board to the Fee Allocation Committee of the Associated Student Government. The experience has given me just a smidge of resolute understanding of representative government and parliamentary process as I exacted my personal agendas with your student fees. My participation in this illuminati of CMU was perhaps the most impactful on my growth as a journalist as well as my born-again belief in representative democracy.

The relationships that I’ve formed with students, staff and the suits in Lowell Heiney have been the most joyous though. Without Levi Meyer, my first editor at the Crite, my experiences here would not have been the same. After three years at this paper, he is still the only person who can tell me what to do. Professor Eric Sandstrom’s ability to overlook my hair-brained eccentricity and knock the fundamentals of versatile journalism through my thick skull is probably the reason I’ve been able to reach graduation at all. The person deserving of the most gratitude is CMU’s Director of Media Relations Dana Nunn for always calling me back.

Will you find a great job after you graduate? Maybe. Will you ever pay off your student loans? Maybe. If that’s what is going to make this whole experience “worth it” for you, then you overlook the most important part. When you complete this, you will be permanently changed. Pain, fear and anxiety, along with stupid Scantron mistakes, will mesh with at least a minimal amount of intellectual development to morph you into something that you would never be otherwise.

It is absolutely worth it.

ealinko@mavs.coloradomesa.edu