I am no stranger to late nights. 

As editor in chief and president of the Yale Daily News, such nights defined my existence. I’d doze off on the couch in my office at 3 a.m. halfway through an edit, wake up to an urgent call about a sourcing error, rub my eyes and dive back in. The rhythm of my days was shaped by deadlines, live blogs, breaking alerts, budget reports, last-minute meetings about global conflict and newsroom conflict and everything in between. 

I lost count of the number of days for which my only rest was a 20-odd minute nap on that couch. I lost count of the number of times I wept at my desk alone in that five-and-a-half-story building, overwhelmed by the news moment in which we found ourselves — as campus tensions swirled in response to escalating war in the Middle East, as chilling suppression of free speech gripped universities nationwide, as Yale arrested more than 40 of my peers at the very end of my tenure. 

That version of me was always on, always wired. Awakeness and asleepness blurred. A brutal mix of caffeine and adrenaline and turmeric shots from the Elm masked any hunger or heartache. Friends sent me farewell columns by my contemporaries at other college newspapers who had also gone through this often isolating experience; I felt seen, heard, supported. I was comforted by the confidence that the work I was doing deeply mattered. Still, I desperately craved — needed — respite. 

So when my term finally came to an end and I walked out of 202 York for the last time, I thought the stillness would feel like relief.

There wasn’t a column to prepare me for how difficult it actually was. 

This past year, I encountered unexpected malaise. Last year, at least I knew where my stress was coming from. But as a washed-up senior, I was unprepared for the hollowness that would smother me, with what felt like infinite time on my hands and no productive way to fill it. What once was a liberatory promise became a prison of possibility, where everything was new but nothing was exciting. I itched to do something of value. I knew I had peaked.

I began writing this column in fits and starts — I have, of course, been thinking about it since the day I was elected to head the Oldest College Daily all the way back in April 2023. At first, it was going to be a tribute to student journalism, to the people who make it happen, to the newspaper that raised me. Later, I considered writing about what it meant for me to be the first brown person to run the News, about the pressure I felt as a woman of color to exist and survive and thrive at 202 York. 

I thought about documenting the profound emotional toll of reporting on sensitive and specific instances of campus sexual assault and student death. Later, I wanted it to be an indictment of the echo chambers that polarize our insular campus community. Of the burnout that befalls underpaid student journalists who commit themselves to thankless and essential labor. Of the dangerous vitriol to which we are subjected for decisions made daily and under pressure — in my case, a violent doxxing campaign that threatened my life and pushed me out of my apartment last October for fear of anthrax. 

But this final version of my column first materialized after a particularly uneventful day of endless events. I accomplished nothing but did many things. I tried — and failed — to execute a surprise birthday party for a first-year suitemate. I made brief appearances at a formal and then at that night’s Feb Club festivities. I found myself trekking home through the ice at 3:45 a.m. after unnecessary hours babbling with dear friends as they played Catan for absolutely no reason. And for the first time I can remember, I didn’t feel guilty about having accomplished nothing. Instead, I felt unrelenting gratitude for my people. For the time spent spilling drinks and secrets and stupid trinkets of gossip. For the ability to sit and talk and coexist in comfort.

Over the last few weeks, I have carved out 10 or 15 minutes at the end of each night — sometimes at 10 p.m., sometimes at 4 a.m. — to try and distill the powerfully contradictory feelings that this final year of Yale has brought me. In those windows, I found myself constantly reading and re-reading those previous drafts, little snippets of past-Anika thoughts that litter my Notes app and form a diary of sorts. 

What I found in those scraps was not resolution. It was recovery.

Too many of us come to Yale having been taught that exhaustion is a virtue. That to lead is to sacrifice. That to be valuable is to be productive. I lived that myth for a long time, and for a while, it served me. Until it didn’t.

This year, my life slowed down. The adrenaline ran out. The work didn’t define me anymore. And still, I found peace.

That peace came in the mundane things: in nights at (formerly) Barracuda and in Timothy Dwight common rooms, in board games and beer cans, in first dates and fever dreams and a prolonged breakup that has taken all year and still feels never-ending. In events that I thought would be monumental and landmarking but fell woefully short of my expectations — and that, too, was okay.

I wish I had known that sooner. I wish someone had told me that leadership is not martyrdom. That stress is not a prerequisite for significance. That community can — and maybe should — be built on joy, not just trauma.

This is therefore not a tribute to the crises. It is a tribute to what comes after — the version of myself I met only once I let go of the story I thought I had to write.

In August, I came back to campus for my senior year jaded by the trauma that defined my tenure at the Oldest College Daily. 

I leave it softer. 

ANIKA ARORA SETH was the 146th editor in chief and president of the News over the 2023-2024 school year. She is a graduating senior in Branford College studying statistics & data science and women’s, gender & sexuality studies. Contact her at anika.seth@yale.edu .