Has the Earth’s gravitational pull shifted to my shoulders?

I only started working here a little more than a year ago. I started in Fall 2005 as a copy editor, terrified and unsure. And now I’m sitting in this big office, looking through the glass window at the busy staff working and not working to get the paper out. I have a big window that fills the office with sunlight on beautiful days. I can see all the way down past the Bull Street parking garage to Williams-Brice Stadium. When I look out the window at the Russell House patio below, crowds of prospective students are shown across campus. They have campus maps, brochures, Starbucks coffee mugs and The Daily Gamecock.
That’s when I realize what I do matters. I was sitting in class and the kids around me flip through the paper. My teacher is reading it while we work in groups.
Monday we got a phone call from a lady with the CLASSIC ballet, not the CITY ballet. Who knew Columbia had two ballet groups? My inbox is full daily with people who want to say something about an article we ran. It might not be wonderful to hear that you made a mistake, but at least we know people are reading.
As I look out my set of windows, one looking out at the staff and another at the people below me, I realize how HUGE this is. The weight of it hits me like I’m Atlas with the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Tomorrow I will be a part of a roundtable to discuss football ticket distribution and then I have a meeting with someone from student government. It feels bigger now -- the weight of it.
We almost got sued this week. Somehow, I sidestepped that one. We messed up headlines, and I got endless e-mails from student government officials.
On a rainy day, I passed a paper smudged into the puddles, lost to the rain. A friend asked if that made me sad. No, not really. Someone had to have picked up the paper and moved it to its liquid fate. Someone went through the effort to drop it there, and some how that makes what I’m doing up here so disconnected from those people out the window feel even heavier.
Yeah. This is a giant responsibility.
And so much fun.

-- Editor
Liz White