"LIFE ETC."

…and they all lived happily apart.

Well, this is the end. But it's not a shocking one. I won't turn out to be dead or something (how sensational it would be if I died before this piece is published).

I want to talk to you this time. Not about some social-political-popular-environmental-educational topics, but about the three year history of this column.

Since the first day, I have had a love-hate relationship with “Life etc.” I owned it, and it owned me. I directed it, and it directed me. As Asst. Prof Tyler Durden puts it: "the things you own end up owning you," and it happened word by word with this column. But I'm happy with where it got me.

It's been three years since I've started this thing. I have to confess that I hate the first articles I published. Can you believe that in the Bilkent News, we didn't even have titles for the columns until the spring of 2005? I don't like anything about the first semester of "Life etc." I hate the photo I had before the current one. My sister, somehow, managed to take a good photo of me. There are two different comments about my current one:
1) It doesn't look like me,
2) And it looks good.
No one ever told me these two together. But… You see what I mean? I'm sure you do…

After the first semester, things got better. In three years, coming up with ideas for this column became an addiction for me. An addiction I'll need to quit soon.
Since the first terrible columns, I haven't received many criticisms about my column, neither from my friends, nor my readers. It made me sure that there weren't many people reading my work. That's why I was so surprised whenever someone told me that he/she followed "Life etc."

Generally, I don't start sentences with "I wish…" because I think you need to accept what you have in hand if you want to achieve something. But I'll make an exception: I wish I had received many harsh criticisms every week. That would be a great opportunity to know myself. I would look for some ways to learn the things I'm not good at.

Since I rarely received criticisms, I became my own critic. Every Tuesday, I got a copy of Bilkent News to drive myself mad.

When I look back and compare my first articles with the recent ones, I see some progress. This means, I guess, my self-criticism had worked to some degree. And that's the best thing about this whole thing.

My family, friends, instructors and the Bilkent News family played a great role during this wonderful challenge. Privatesozluk.com, on the other hand, taught me how to express myself to the public. Bilkent News' great editor, Hande Seçkin Onat, and our past and current redactors Diane Grabowski and Carley Piatt, had the biggest role in creating this column.

And of course, Her, for whom I still can't come up with a good-enough adjective.
Thank you all…
Bye.

(Gosh… I exceeded 500 words limit. I promise, it won't happen again…) PS: You can find the “Life etc.” archive with translations, and a link to my blog page at www.geocities.com/ismail_orhan