The end of the year is fast approaching, while most seniors feel like they have a long time to graduation, things are happening all too fast in The Observer office. Next week will be our last official week.

After next week we will all have more free time. After next week, we will be able to go out a lot more, see our non-Observer friends a lot more, sleep a lot more and do a lot more school work — well maybe not. While I have been formulating an extensive plan of action for the last two months of my senior year, I still feel somewhat sad.

After, managing the Viewpoint Department for a year, I finally realized what I wanted to accomplish. The past two weeks have seemed all too short to do it all. Now I know how to go about accomplishing these goals. But now is not the time. It is time to let go.

It is time to teach those succeeding me all that I know and to encourage them to do their best, to let them know they can ask for help and be confident that others will rise to meet the challenge and, most importantly, to give them the room and time to be all they can be. It is time to move on.

Moving on is hard to discuss now, with over two months to go, yet it is becomes easier if we put things in their place. There are many friends who are not bestfriends, but are not strangers. It is these people we will miss the most. These faces are the ones we will wonder about randomly in the coming years — acquaintances that happen to fall awkwardly into the category of those who we cannot seem to keep in touch with. We are so used to seeing their faces; they are a crucial part of the Notre Dame experience. We cannot possibly take these people with us in our luggage and we cannot expect the whole campus to move with us. But we can take comfort knowing that though the role they played in our lives is vacant, someone else will fill it.

Just as when we left high school we found new friends here, friends that seemed so similar to someone we knew at home, when we graduate in May others will fill the vacant roles in our lives. I have made close friends here, at The Observer and in my dorm, friends that I hope to keep. There will also be many other friends that will slowly fall through the cracks, those friends will always be in my heart, a memory that is sparked when I meet someone who fills the same role. Someone who seems so familiar. In that we can take comfort, knowing that while an acquaintance may be gone, there will always be someone like them that will be there when we need him or her.

We still have some time here and moving on will be tough, but at least we can be somewhat consoled knowing that we are leaving competent people behind. People that are different from us, but can excel in a different way. Wherever we go, we will meet more people, who will be special too, just maybe not in the Notre Dame, go Irish way.

• Going forward, moving on