Olivia Gleason '26

by Olivia Gleason '26 on April 16, 2026

I’m finding it very hard to believe that this is the third-to-last issue of The Cowl that I will ever take part in producing. What started as my timid entrance into the office as a freshman copyeditor and is ending in my time as co-editor-in-chief is quickly coming to an end, and this is something that, no matter how hard I try, feels impossible to wrap my head around. 

As a spring-semester senior, I’ve found myself experiencing such disbelief in just about every area of my life. It’s hard to believe that these are my last few weeks living in a house full of some of my closest friends. It’s hard to believe that I only have a few weeks left to finish my senior English thesis. It’s hard to believe that this time next year—in fact, this time next month—I will no longer be a college student, and will have to face the reality of the workplace that comes after Providence College. For the past several weeks, I’ve experienced a particular instinct to dwell on what is coming to a close in my life, to try to grapple with my graduation that is so quickly approaching on the horizon. 

And yet, I’ve begun to realize that this instinct is largely what makes graduation feel so daunting in the first place. When everything is framed as a loss, it’s easy to feel as though we are leaving something behind without gaining anything in return. But that framing ignores a crucial truth, in my opinion: none of these experiences are actually disappearing. Instead, they are accumulating, compounding on themselves as things we can take with us, and actively shaping how we move through whatever comes next after our time at PC.

I think that focusing primarily on what we are losing as graduation approaches risks reducing our college experience to something temporary, when in reality, its value lies in how enduring it is. The skills we’ve developed, the relationships we’ve built, and the passions we’ve discovered do not stay limited to the confines of campus; they stay with us and can be accessed at any time.

Although focusing on loss in this moment of my life feels like the natural option, I’ve been challenging myself to focus more on what I can take away from each experience that is coming to a close. Since joining the newspaper as a first-semester freshman, for example, I can focus on how my time on The Cowl has been wholly positive. From improving my own editing and proofreading skills, to having the opportunity to design the front page, to being a part of a bustling community of people who share my passion for journalism, the experiences I have been fortunate enough to have while on The Cowl are ones I will carry with me well beyond graduation into whichever career I find myself in. 

So while it may be natural to feel unsettled by all of these lasts, in truth, they really only tell half of the story that is our time at PC. What feels like an ending is, in many ways, evidence of just how much there is to carry forward with us into our next chapters.