I’ve been thinking about this goodbye column for years now, and it’s taken many forms in my head.
Sometimes, it’s an emotional farewell, a litany of acknowledgements and thank yous that end my tenure with bittersweet tears. Other times, it’s a pointed critique of the student body, exploring how the greatest opponents to The Campus are often overzealous students pissed off that we did our jobs and told the truth.
In every case, I’ve imagined this column to pass on whatever wisdom I’ve accumulated over my time. I’ll let you decide if I accomplished that.
In true Sami fashion, I’m going to write this too long and use subheadings, so without further ado here are three lessons from my time with The Campus.

Lesson One: Listen
If you’ve read my work, you might know that I’m a bit of a numbers guy. So let’s run ‘em: I’ve got 160 bylined stories online, with an additional 51 photo credits. Add to that 40-60 Instagram posts — depending on how you count — and my name’s on around 250 different pieces of media across 89 editions of The Campus. There’s a decent case to make that I’m one of the more prolific staffers in our paper’s history.
Yet I would characterize this work less as “writing” or “producing,” and more as “listening.” For all the stories and headlines I published, I saw twice that number of stories embedded in interviews and cut out for length and focus.
The work of a journalist requires not just regurgitation of facts, but a deep understanding of the context around those facts. You don’t “produce” a good story; you weave it out of the stories of those involved, and you can’t do that without understanding where everyone stands within the community.
To write this very column, I read the farewell columns of editors-in-chief past. Their influence shines through; like Marley Parish, ’19, and Ethan Woodfill, ’21, I’ve tried to quantify my time on staff. Like Roman Hladio, ’23, I’m trying to impress the importance of listening and struggling to focus four years into a single column. Like Sara Holthouse, ’20, I can’t help but think of the “Hamilton” song “One Last Time” as I count down the days to graduation.
All this is to say: no matter where you go, listen before you speak, and understand that which came before you. In an age where it’s easier than ever to shout, stay quiet to hear what others are saying and let the people around you empower your own perspective.

Lesson Two: Trust Yourself
Once you start listening, you’ll start noticing how patched-together leadership often is. For me, paying attention in the newsroom taught me a lot about leadership and reporting — including the consistency with which you’ll have no idea what to do, and how often the spitballed answer you give turns out okay.
Case-in-point, this very section. I knew I wanted to talk about trusting yourself and trusting the process, but I didn’t know exactly how to say it, afraid of getting everything wrong or producing a crappy farewell column. I stewed in this anxiety, aware that my deadline is in five and a half hours and I’ve got a laundry list of things to do. I needed something, anything for this column.
So I just started writing, thinking about how I can at least connect the piece to the opening lesson. Honesty is always a good policy, so maybe I can talk a little about the struggles of this very paragraph. Slowly, some sort of section — not the strongest part of this column, nor my finest piece of writing — comes into fruition. A-ha! Some meta-commentary to disguise my anxiety and pass on some wisdom to the youngsters.
I’m not sure how much of this section will make it past our dutiful editors. But it’s something, an answer.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s okay to not know what to do. If you’re in a position of responsibility where people are looking up to you and expecting great things from you, it’s probably because you’re supposed to be there, because you are the best person for the job.
So trust yourself to deliver. Trust your own experience and instincts to guide you to an answer, and then take stock of what you’ve got and see if it can be improved. Gather feedback from your team, and see if they’ve got ideas, and then implement whatever solution you have.
At the end of the day, there are a lot more right answers than you think — so trust your own gut to find at least one of them.

Lesson Three: Rely On Others
To be honest, I never actually thought I’d make it this far. I always believed that somehow I’d screw it all up, that I would crash out of the paper and end my career in quiet ignominy.
This pernicious self-doubt, this fear of a certain doom lurked in every corner. With every story, every publication, I waited for some unseen Sword of Damocles to fall — a major factual inaccuracy, a forgotten source, a mental breakdown. I was, and in some way still am, convinced of the inevitability of my own failure.
Yet, even when I never believed in myself, others believed in me. The 23 papers that fill the newsroom wall, my endless list of article credits, this very column — none of it would have been possible without a long list of people.
First and foremost, my fiance Piper, who knows my stories better than I do and never stopped pushing me to be better; who helped me design and redesign my comp; who picked me up every time I fell; who I ironically met the same week I started with The Campus. She believed in me, even when I never believed in myself. Thank you, my love.
This fantastic, award-winning staff — Anna, Sam, Kyle, Zaynab, Henry, Eve, Noell, Ben, Emma, Joe, AB, Paige, Ray, Piper — you guys are The Campus, and I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished and thankful that you believed in me. You have forged yourselves into one of the greatest teams in our newspaper’s 148-year history, and I cannot wait to see what your future holds after graduation or into next year. Those papers on the wall are your hard work; hold your heads high.
My predecessors — Sara, Ethan, Roman, among countless others — believed in me, and pushed me to be a writer, an editor and eventually Editor-in-Chief. They saw the potential in an awkward, nerdy freshman and taught him how to be the reporter he is today.
My successor — Sam Heilmann — believes in me. Under them, I know The Campus will be stronger and better than ever, evolving and growing for future generations of Gators. They reminded a grumpy old editor how to have hope in a new generation of journalists, inspiring me for two years with their quiet determination and unstoppable will.
Our faculty adviser — the unforgettable Mike Crowley — believed in me, at least enough to answer my countless questions and field phone call after phone call about the nuance of a single sentence.
Anything I have been able to do with this paper, I owe to this Campus family.
The lesson here is, even when the world seems to be ending, when it seems the hammer is about to fall, people will believe in you. Maybe it’s a professor. Maybe it’s a peer. Maybe it’s the person down the hall. Maybe it’s a younger student looking for guidance. But if you can’t believe in yourself, let someone else believe in you.
For The Campus, I’m Sami Mirza.