My tenure at The Pacer is ending just as it began: writing an inordinately lengthy piece about movies that no one necessarily asked for, but I was given the platform to pursue nonetheless.
As I frantically neared a 2,500 word-count on an article about the best films of 2023, I impishly asked if that could bypass my farewell letter, suggesting that it could speak for itself in all its self-indulgence. The answer was a resounding “no.” Though my disposition signified I thought that piece would suffice as the ultimate indicator of my time here, the truth is I have been avoiding writing this so I wouldn’t cement the bittersweet nature of my departure on the horizon. In one final piercing of irony, The Pacer has encouraged me once more to look beyond my foibles and insecurities and actually grow as an individual. (Beleaguered sigh.)
Please forgive me for the overwhelming sentimentality. I have a cloying sincerity, one that humans find off-putting but dogs find endearing, which admittedly often consoled me in my loneliness. But dogs are not like people, and, shockingly, they cannot read my highfalutin film writing, which posed quite the issue. I somehow grew up swiftly but not fast enough, developing a zeal for writing and colorful academic language that felt true to myself but isolated me from my peers. That’s before I discovered my people, those who cracked the cipher and somehow understood me. “Everything Everywhere All at Once is an antidote to existential dread,” I said. They graciously nodded along. “Bursting with joy and pathos, Barbie is a balletic fantasia of ideas that miraculously manages to pack a poignant, personal wallop,” I wrote in a super-sized review. They effusively responded instead of rolling their eyes, an impressive feat in hindsight.
I have a hopelessly romantic viewpoint of life, which is why the work of Barbie director Greta Gerwig has always resonated with me. My senior year of high school, I was enraptured with a quote from her sensational adaptation of Little Women (taken a smidge out of context here for the wildly pretentious purposes of this letter): “But remind them that while we wait, these hard days need not be wasted… Do their duties bravely, fight their enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully…” Before I waded into UTM, more than slightly disrupted by a global pandemic, this bit set the chimera for coming-of-age, a seemingly unattainable, rosy gold standard for growing up. Yet the grand mythology of college actually coincides with its reality: to self-actualize and become fully-formed.
Under the sage stewardship of Tomi McCutchen (the one true girlboss, a term we reveled in teaching her), The Pacer provided me with ample opportunities to explore and cultivate my voice. No request seemed too ridiculous, and from being a timid freshman pitching a movie review to a marginally less bashful young lad with several years behind him as the paper’s Arts and Entertainment editor, the sweeping tales that longingly defined my teenage years became the foundation of my formative young adult ones, carving out my place in a complicated world. My greatest adventure in life thus far has been writing for this wonderful, strange paper and coming out the other side as an individual, not to mention a collective bout of delirium in a car barreling toward a journalism conference in Louisiana that was to never be spoken of again. Oops.
But to only speak of myself would do a grave disservice to my colleagues and companions at The Pacer. Always being a bit reserved and a lone wolf, the publication imparted to me that the human experience is better spent as a collaborative one, a lesson I will always cherish moving forward. Life alone is one spent in vain, and to hear and absorb the perspective of others was incredibly enriching. Thank you to all my co-workers for a truly wild yet worthwhile ride that included debating the semantics of wording, laying out pages until the dead of night and convincing me some of my florid words did, in fact, need to be cut, all while enjoying your camaraderie along the way. College life is often very tumultuous, and sometimes you need others to persuade you into believing you are “slaying,” as we like to say, when really you just need help with those next few steps when all else seems lost. It’s important to feel big, if outsized, on occasion when you’ve convinced yourself of your infinitesimal size and worth.
But my greatest expression of gratitude must go to Ms. Tomi, one of the most monumental advocators, advisors and overall supporters in my life. Where other superiors may have deterred me from my aspirations, she urged me along toward them, and to even dream bigger. Her recommendation is what got me into the Student Symposium program at the Telluride Film Festival, but she’ll insist it was my “hard work,” like all stellar champions do. Standing at a petite physical stature but exuding a presence that is genuinely larger than life, she’s a woman who embodies not only academic and professional excellence but also human compassion and empathy in its finest form. If I have even an ounce of her wisdom and grace or that of other professors at my time in the department, like Ms. Giles or Dr. Nanney, I will be in more than incredible shape, maybe even to become a girlboss myself one day.
Oh, gosh. It seems my musings and waxing poetic have taken me off the rails in writing once more. This is a relatively short farewell, and I’ve already given one unsolicited movie quote. However, as we all know, when you run the gamut of things to say, you steer into the skid. I think of the soulful dictum from a movie that was one of the first reviews I wrote for The Pacer (Please don’t look it up, as I’m sure it’s not good). “I’ll see you down the road,” Frances McDormand’s character says in Nomadland, a film about drifting with the inevitable passage of time on your own terms. Even as my path takes me somewhere else, my heart will always linger with this beloved publication that made me wholly myself. Yeah, that’ll do.
