That uncomfortable time of year when they play pro-football on Friday nights and you reread your lease agreement and see you missed August 1st deadlines. It’s a beautiful time of year, in a way.

For students like me this week before school starts is just as much a start to a new year as January 1, except the break from school has been twice as long and half as productive. Internships have wound down and it’s time to move back out of the parents house—back to bills and responsibilities.

For me the thrill of moving back to Columbia this semester isn’t about having my first apartment, or whether or not the Big XII will outlast the new couch we bought, or seeing Sporting Kansas City makes the playoffs this year.

What I’m most excited about is the chance to get serious.

Although I entered my sequence in the spring, this semester is really my first as a true upperclassmen, and with that comes the opportunity to write for The Missourian. At the Missouri School of Journalism, The Missourian is where the big kids play, and for me, it’s where I get to start building my reputation as a serious writer and editor.

In my time with The Maneater, I got to expand on my basic reporting and editing skills. At The Park Record I got to the daily life of a community newspaper. And this summer at Sporting Kansas City added an arsenal of multimedia reporting and editing skills to my toolbox.

But in all honesty, much of (if not all) the success I have over the next two years at Mizzou rides on the impressions I make and success I find in my first semester at The Missourian.

Unlike my last few semesters, these next few months I’ll be spending my time “doing” instead of planning and chattering. I hope to spend all fall creating original content to share regularly on this blog, and frankly, that’s what it should have been all along.

So here’s to developing a voice of my own and proving I can do all that I’ve said I can.