It’s my first week at USC, and I have accomplished everything I wanted to. 

I’d spent the last 10 years of my life learning the danger of hoping for, well, anything, and was staunchly determined to keep my dreams in check while at school. So, I signed myself up for classes I did not like, to contribute to a major I had no real passion for and was moving toward an email job in a field that I did not care about. 

I have put myself on a path where there will be no passion and certainly no hope for my future, and therefore no chance of vulnerability or disappointment in any form. I am happy with my place in life, I feel very safe and very comfortable, and I foresee nothing whatsoever that could be a threat to my plans. 

And then, on a whim, because no one can really live under the terms outlined above, I apply for the Daily Trojan.

My first semester is a comical blur of missed deadlines and editors fully rewriting my pieces. I’m not a natural, and I wouldn’t describe myself as passionate. But something about journalism sinks its teeth into me and refuses to let go. Without really understanding — or allowing myself to understand — why, I come back the next semester. And the semester after that.

I get better. I win the awards, write the big headlines, earn praise from my editors that meant more than everything else combined. I become, to my understanding, someone trustworthy and reliable. I rediscover my love for writing. I feel valued. I feel like I’m doing something meaningful, and I feel like I’m good at it. 

I feel terrified. To admit how much journalism meant to me would be to completely trash my foolproof plan of “feel deeply about nothing and never get hurt ever again,” and I can’t stomach the implications of that. I turn down a promotion. I declare three minors in the hopes that at least one would distract me from the way I feel about journalism. I ignore the classwork for every single one to edit and write for the Daily Trojan. 

Back in the newsroom, years have gone by, and I’ve become a staple figure. More than valued, I feel like I belong somewhere. People greet me when I walk in, people come to me with problems, and I’m here to help. People help me without question, and I’m so, so proud of the work we’re all doing. I’m still ignoring my feelings, but there’s a tug at my heart every time I walk into the newsroom that’s getting more and more difficult to suppress. 

And then, it’s the fall of my senior year. I’m in the newsroom, it’s three in the morning, I’ve been there almost 10 hours and I’ve finally finished everything I needed to, but I’m staying behind to help the Sports editor publish articles to our website. The situation is objectively miserable, I’m being told I should go home, and I think, before I can stop myself, “Why would I leave when there’s nowhere else I’d rather be?”

That was the first honest thought I’d ever had about journalism.

When I was 16, I looked at my shredded palm after wiping out in my driveway and was hit with a wave of overwhelming dread when I realized how much I had messed up. That same feeling hits me in the newsroom as any remaining delusion that I did not deeply care about journalism finally broke. And I knew, just like I knew my hand would never fully heal, that there was no going back. 

I could no longer pretend I hadn’t failed at my one goal of not loving anything too deeply. 

Predictably, I’m terrified. I think about running away one last time: throw my computer out the window, resign, log out of Slack and just never log back on, and a hundred other ways of escaping my heart.

Instead, I admit it: I have fallen irrevocably in love with journalism. It means more to me than I could ever describe. And, as I take a moment to look around the newsroom, at the people and paper to whom I am so eager to give so much of myself to, I realize I can’t settle for an email job when I am lucky enough to know something else exists that means this much to me. 

For the first time in a very long time, I allow myself to want something more than I fear wanting it. And, for the first time in even longer, I have no idea what the future holds. But, I know in my heart that I’d rather face a thousand disappointments on the path to becoming a professional journalist than never try at all. And I have real hope that I might be able to make it work. 

I am such a different, happier, more confident person than I was as a freshman, and for so much of that transformation, I have the Daily Trojan to thank. 

I want to thank every person who has edited my articles, fact-checked my sources, explained Associated Press style or has in any way mentored me over the last four years. I’ve never taken a class in journalism; any skill I have is because someone was kind enough to volunteer their time to teach me. 

To Jon, David, Sean, Quinten, Nathan, Jen, Sasha, Christina: Thank you for investing so much in me and making the newsroom a place where I could find myself again. And to Nicholas, whose guidance and friendship have meant more to me than I could ever express: Thank you. I wouldn’t be half the editor, writer or leader I am today without you to look up to. 

Thank you, all of you, for making me brave again. 

“Editors’ Epilogue” is a rotating column featuring a different Daily Trojan editor in each installment writing about their personal experiences. Zachary Whalen is a senior majoring in creative writing and an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan.