Farewell Com
Faithful readers, who I’m sure keep up with the COM Blog regularly, I am graduating. If I were writing this on an old-timey typewriter, my tears would stain the page and make the ink run and this whole thing would be completely unintelligible. In that spirit, since I don’t have a typewriter, I will just make this goodbye letter to COM completely unintelligible.
COM, I met you when I was a junior in high school. I was just a girl with a suitcase (vera bradley backpack) and a dream (desperate desire to leave New Jersey). I missed the COM tour time slot so I had to roam the halls by myself. I was secretly glad I wasn’t on a tour because I knew my parents would have been weird and embarrassing.
When I finally met some actual COM students, I thought they were literally the coolest. Not just because they all wore jean jackets – they just seemed so put-together, they’d all had awesome internships, they were self-assured and confident and doing what they loved. I aspired to be them, and folks, it kind of happened! At COM, I got to host my own podcast, be a co-host on a radio show (shoutout Trash Talk), I interned at a real late night show, and I started a feminist satire paper (The Pinky Toe, check us out on Instagram.) I achieved so much while I was here, but I was having so much fun doing it that I didn’t realize just how much I’ve accomplished until I sat down to write this letter.
I never thought I would be ready to leave college, and in some ways I’m not mostly because I’ll miss my friends and professors and this incredible city. But in terms of feeling prepared to enter the TV industry, I weirdly feel like I can actually do it. And YES I get paid to say that as a COM Ambassador, but I also actually believe that COM prepared me for this industry better than any other school I could have gone to.
What I love about COM is that it’s never cutthroat and competitive. We thrive when we build each other up, and when one person gets a cool opportunity, it benefits everyone. I don’t know about you, but my high school was the exact opposite. I want to be a TV writer because I love collaborating, bouncing ideas off of others in order to tell the best version of a story. I’ve already gotten to do that so much here at COM, and it’s made me appreciate the journey as I work toward the destination.
So that was kind of sappy, and now I’d like to miss a few of the specific things I will miss most about COM.
1. Zinnekin’s waffle truck. I usually talked myself out of buying a waffle because I’m broke
but the one time I did, it was amazing.
2. Lockers in the basement. These are already gone but I will continue to miss them.
3. Professor Bill Braudis.
4. Professor Adam Lapidus.
5. Professor Deb Jaramillo.
6. The Zimmerman Family Social Activation Center. I wasn’t allowed in but it looked cool.
7. Seeing the bright, smiling (read: super tired but still managing to be peppy) COM Ambassadors working in Undergrad Affairs.
8. Giving tours of the building and taking families to the maintenance ladder on the third
floor and being like “so now we’re going up to the fourth floor.”
9. Meeting excited prospective freshmen and undergrads and getting them pumped about COM classes.
10. The amazing COMmunity I’ve been lucky enough to spend four years with.
In conclusion, I love you COM. And although I did vow never to give this school another penny, when I’m rich and famous, I’ll consider giving this beloved building a renovation.
