Just four years ago, I was going into my senior year of high school. I had no idea where I wanted to go to college (except that I knew I didn’t want it to be in my hometown) or what I wanted to do, but I was excited about the prospect of simply doing something. So I took a chance and came out to Rochester, hoping to get a sense of the answers to these questions.

Fast forward to the present and I guess things haven’t changed much: I have no idea where I want to go (or even if) I want to go to graduate school and, if anything, have even less of a clue of what I’ll be doing 10 years from now. It seems as if college has (shockingly) opened more doors for me, and now I am stuck in the middle trying to determine which one to walk through. Instead of narrowing my interests, I’ve broadened them, and while it’s a great feeling to know that I have at least discovered these interests, it is difficult to know that once I leave UR, I’ll be forced to choose between them.

The same kind of logic applies to the 1,000+ members of the class of 2013 who arrived here on campus yesterday. Confronted with so many opportunities for how to get involved, so many options for paths to go down – biology or history, fencing or arts club, frat quad or academic quad – it makes it even more difficult to choose.

For me, my experience here has been shaped by my time at this paper. The Campus Times has offered me not only an avenue to express my opinions literally, but also an environment where I feel comfortable exploring avenues I usually wouldn’t have the courage to investigate.

It’s been reported (ironically by journalists) that journalism is on the decline, that it is so competitive a field to break into and that newspapers are going out of business every day. For those newspapers barely keeping their head above water and for aspiring young writers and photographers, what can we do to stay alive? Last February, at a conference, I received perhaps the best and simplest answer to that question: practice good journalism.

What does that mean exactly? In our case, it means we need your help. Whether it’s in the form of constructive criticism (you can always direct any comments to editor@campustimes.org), placing advertisements or participating by writing, taking photographs or working with online content, among others ways. Too often, the CT finds itself short staffed. Perhaps it is because UR doesn’t have a journalism school. Or because we don’t adequately advertise for new staff. Or because the newspaper is an intimidating place for most. Whatever the combination of reasons, however, it still doesn’t change the reality of the situation – we can’t put out the best paper we can when we don’t have the resources.

This coming semester, we have the same goal that staffs have had in years past: to produce a great newspaper. Just how we go about doing that depends more on the UR community than perhaps we had even realized. And for that reason, we will be working hard to connect more with that community in ways that extend beyond just delivering a paper every Thursday. We have already started to form an alumni advisory committee that will be there to provide us with feedback on a regular basis. We will also be reaching out to the student population more, polling more about key issues on campus so that we can truly have a finger on the pulse of student’s concerns.

And perhaps most importantly, and something I can’t stress enough, the door to our office is always open. Not always literally, but most certainly figuratively. Whether it’s by email, phone or by stopping by our office in Wilson Commons 102, I can guarantee at the very least that any concerns, suggestions or input of any kind will be heard.

We have a lot of work to do this coming semester, but we’re excited for the opportunity to do what we can to contribute to the campus community and enable them with information. Perhaps for this reason, I handed out copies of our orientation issue to freshmen yesterday without being unsettled at the number of young faces taking the place of familiar ones who graduated last spring, but instead with a feeling of excitement at the opportunity to introduce them to this community.