11

Do we ever lose what was once ours?

I don’t know why I thought 
writing this would be easy, or why 
I thought it would resemble the 
same process of all my past Daily 
pieces. I thought I would make my 
short trek to the Law Quad, bask in 
solitude with a carefully curated, 
mood-setting playlist and dedicate 
two hours to pouring my heart 
onto paper. In my head, it should 
have been that seamless. Automatic 
almost, or at the very least, a well-
rehearsed routine, considering how 
integrated the Daily became in my 
life. 
Instead, 
writing 
this 
article 
has been quite the opposite. For 
the last five days, I’ve started to 
write, then stopped, then started 
again, drilling into all corners of my 
consciousness to find some profound 
yet understandable way to articulate 
my feelings about graduating. And 
yet, I found nothing, just blockage. 
And the thought that writing my 
final column for the Statement 
section — my home, my child, my 
haven wrapped in one — would be 
easy, was admittedly naive.
Yet for some reason, I’m not 
surprised. I’ve been feeling this 
way for quite some time now: a 
stoic limbo of mixed emotions, as 
if everything in my life is ending 
and starting all at once, leading to a 
catastrophic explosion of numbness. 
My world is changing right in front 
of my eyes: My college friends and I 
are leaving the city we spent the last 
four years making our own, moving 
to different corners of the country in 
hopes of starting our capital-A ‘Adult 
life.’ Family members are getting 
married, my childhood house is on 
the brink of being sold. The weekdays 
of classes and extracurriculars are 
soon to be replaced by a nine to five 
(or six? maybe seven?) job. 
And yet, altered they may be, each 
facet of my life will carry on without 
me, all morphing into someone else’s. 
Ann Arbor will remain relatively 
unchanged 
by 
my 
departure, 
destined for an annual influx of new 
students. In fact, its functionality 
will 
be 
virtually 
unchanged, 

completely 
unbothered. 
The 
University will continue to be the 
maize and blue, work-hard-play-
hard, Leaders and Best institution it 
prides itself on. Football games will 
still happen every weekend in the 
same rowdy Big House, with parties 
in driveways I once frequented every 
Saturday still filled to the brim with 
excitedly inebriated students. Pizza 
House will still be open late into the 
night, Revive will still have weird 
hours and the Law Library will still 
close its doors to undergraduate 
students at 6 p.m. 
My freshman year dorm room 
will be filled with four brand new 
bright-eyed students — they will 
quickly learn the joys, trials and 
tribulations of sharing a sleeping 
space with three other people. My 
senior year home will be transferred 
over to the next set of tenants — 
sophomore frat boys, if I remember 
correctly — and the legacy that my 
four best friends and I curated for 
our little blue house will soon be 
forgotten. Even so, I’m confident 
the love we gave and memories we 
created, be it our affinity for cabbage 
guacamole or our unique and often 
overused vernacular, will be sealed 
into the foundations of its walls. 
My 
two 
chosen 
student 
organizations, 
The 
Michigan 
Daily and the Michigan Fashion 
Media 
Summit 
(MFMS) 
will 
persist 
as 
campus 
trailblazers, 
fully stocked with eager, intelligent 
undergraduates ready to lead. Both 
organizations were crucial to my 
college experience, and yet, my 
time with each of them is already 
up: I wrote my goodbye to the Daily 
this past December, and caught a 
glimpse over the last few months of 
just how seamlessly something I love 
can function without me a part of 
it. I finished all that was needed for 
my role as Vice President of Digital 
for the MFMS when the day of our 
annual Summit concluded. 
Two hours after the Summit 
was over, I left for the airport to 
go to Nashville. I was on the plane 
when the idea hit me: I will be 
passing on all I worked to make 
my own to someone else, someone 
ready to assume the responsibility 
and impact of implementing new 

innovations. It feels weird to say that 
it was a difficult reality to confront, 
ushering in the thought that my 
attachment to everything might 
purely be out of self-interest. Maybe 
my work at the Daily was more about 
earning a Managing Editor position 
and having a staff of writers to direct 
than it was about being a part of a 
self-sustaining paper. Maybe every 
role I applied for was more about 
satisfying my ego than contributing 
to something I love.
And in entertaining these ideas, 
I found myself slipping deeper 
and deeper into clouded, intrusive 
judgment on how the best is all 
behind me, how I will be forgotten, 
how I should have held on tighter to 
my time here while it was still in the 
palm of my hand. 
Thankfully, in that very plane 
seat, I quickly realized how distorted 
my outlook was. Seeking a change 
in perspective, I forced myself to 
ruminate on the positives of the day, 
the past month, the past year, the 
past four. I immediately was drawn 
to the things I accomplished with 
my respective teams by my side, the 
beauty in the friendships I made, 
the tangible, inventive products we 
delivered. 
For the Daily, I daydreamed of 
my start as a Statement Columnist, 
my first interview with former 
Statement Managing Editor Maggie 
Mihaylova, who quickly became my 
mentor. I dreamt of the day I was 
voted on to be Managing Statement 
Editor in December of 2020. My heart 
grew fonder when remembering 
how scared yet invigorated I was for 
the time ahead, how much pride I felt 
in people trusting me to lead, how 
heavy the weight of responsibility 
felt in making sure I got it right. 
I thought of the two years of 
hiring and working closely with 
remarkably 
talented 
writers, 
editors and designers, getting to 
know their amazing, thoughtful, 
wonderful brains as well as I could. 
My eyes widened at the realization 
of just how many Daily staffers I’ve 
watched grow, assuming their own 
leadership 
positions, 
eventually 
succeeding me. 

ANDIE HOROWITZ
Statement Contributor

S T A T E M E N T

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
 4—Wednesday, May 4, 2022 

Reflections from a U-M 
reject turned graduate

The first time I walked through 
campus as a student, I wore a 
Michigan crewneck that my mom 
bought me at a department store, 
hoping it would cover up the deferral 
and two rejections I was carrying 
around on my back. The font spelling 
out the name of the school was just 
the tiniest bit off-brand, but it would 
take a keen eye and a long look to 
recognize that it wasn’t the real 
thing, so I figured I’d get by.
And then I hit the Diag, where I 
was swarmed by M Den–approved 
apparel, and my sweatshirt turned 
into 
an 
advertisement 
for 
my 
fraudulent presence on campus. I 
took it off in a bathroom in Mason 
Hall before my first class, and it sat 
at the bottom of my backpack for the 
rest of the day.
***
I spent mst of my life listening to 
my family tell me that I belonged 
at Michigan — it was progressive, 
it would challenge me, “it’s just 
so you” — but I was academically 
burned out by my junior year of high 
school. My heart wasn’t in my first 
U-M application — which earned 
me the deferral and first rejection — 
my grades weren’t good enough and 
neither were my standardized test 
scores. So I committed to Michigan 
State, my safety school.
I wasn’t necessarily bitter about 
ending up at State, so I decided 
to settle in and make peace with 
where I was. I made friends; I 
found a major I liked; I acted like 
I was going to spend all four of my 
college years in East Lansing. But 
my family wanted me in Ann Arbor, 
so I grudgingly applied to transfer. 
Rejection number two landed in my 
inbox a few months later.
If I had any lingering desire to 
end up at U-M when I submitted 
that second application, there was 
absolutely none when I applied for 
the third and final time in my second 
year at State. My heart wasn’t in 
that application either, but my 
grades were better and I had kind 

professors who were willing to write 
recommendation letters for me. Still, 
I’m partially convinced that what 
ultimately got me into this school 
was pity, the admissions committee 
finally deciding to give me a chance 
after noting how much money I’d 
spent on application fees over the 
years. 
Evidently, third time’s the charm. 
When I got in, it was a hollow 
victory; not only did I not want to 
leave Michigan State, I really didn’t 
want to go to Michigan.
***
That first walk through the Diag 
in the fall of 2019 was marked by a 
deep bitterness. At the will of my 
family, I had left behind friends, 
opportunities, the relatively more 
affordable East Lansing renter’s 
market and, most importantly, over 
30 untransferable credits. This 
doomed me to a fifth year in college, 
perhaps the most frustrating thing 
about the entire situation. A fifth 
year was never a part of my plans; it 
didn’t feel right to me that I would 
spend the majority of my college 
career at a university that I resented 
because I was sure it didn’t actually 
want me.
Now, three years later and just 
days away from graduation, Ann 
Arbor is the first place I’ve ever felt 
truly comfortable calling home.
I would describe my eventual love 
affair with the city as an unfolding. 
At first, I was determined to keep my 
arms crossed firmly over my chest. 
This would be the place where I got 
my degree and nothing more. Maybe 
I wouldn’t have a lot of fun, but at 
least I would have my convictions.
But the first thing I was willing 
to concede that Ann Arbor had 
over East Lansing ended up being 
the key to my unfolding: I could 
actually walk around Ann Arbor. At 
Michigan State, memorizing CATA 
routes was essential for getting to 
anything on time; at Michigan, I can 
walk from my apartment (two blocks 
from East Quad) to Kerrytown (on 
the other side of town) in less than 
half an hour.

KATRINA STEBBINS
Statement Contributor

Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com

