To our readers,

The thought of printing some sort of Bucket List issue first popped into our heads at the start of the winter semester. But what we originally envisioned was something almost completely different from what follows on these pages.

In the beginning, we had hoped to ask Daily seniors to think of that one thing they had always wanted to do — maybe it was to Kayak down the Huron River, or rave on Friday night at the Blind Pig Soul Club — and then go do that thing and write about the experience.

We pitched the idea to our outgoing seniors and, after receiving a less-than-overwhelming response, soon realized we were going to have to change our approach if we still wanted to make this issue a reality.

So, instead of leaving it to our seniors, we opened up for suggestions from anyone we could think of — our closest friends, Daily staffers of any age and, most notably, you, our readers.

After a few weeks, we had a list of about 200 different items that at least someone, somewhere, had on his or her bucket list. Some of the ideas were great — you’ll find a few of them when you flip through the magazine — while others were, let’s just say, forgettable.

To say it was stressful to compile the list is a bit of an understatement. At times we didn’t really know if this would even happen. But through it all, we learned something about ourselves, something every one of you will probably realize before you graduate if you haven’t already: this community — both the University and the city of Ann Arbor — has more to offer us than we ever could have expected when we were just starry-eyed freshmen, more than anyone could accomplish in just four years.

Think about what you’d put on your own personal bucket list. Maybe a friend has told you about how awesome it was that night he or she did karaoke for the first time and recommended you do the same. Or maybe every time you hear the bells of the Carillon ringing from the Burton Tower in between classes you tell yourself you still have to go up there to take in the view. But somehow these things we all promised ourselves we’d do just seem to slip our minds.

Maybe the reason our seniors weren’t as excited as we’d hoped they’d be to participate in this issue was not because they are lazy, but, rather, because the thought of contributing to a bucket list forces them to come face-to-face with a sobering fact: that the time they have left at the University is very rapidly coming to an end. Maybe doing that one thing, the thing they’ve always wanted to do, puts a big, fat, figurative period on their time here as a student.

There’s no way to accomplish everything you’d like before you leave this place. Quite simply, there’s way too much this city has to offer. And even if you do try, every time you think that you’ve completed your ‘list’, you’ll think of a dozen other things to add to it.

We don’t even begin to claim that our Bucket List is an exhaustive index of everything a University student should do before graduation. Hell, some of the items on this list aren’t even that serious; we did try to have some fun with this. But if anything, what our list does is represent an idea: that we can’t, not one of us, let the time we have here slip us by.

It might not exactly be the ‘best years of our lives,’ as everyone older than us claims it is — actually, we really hope they aren’t right about that — but, if not the best years, definitely some that offer us a chance to do things we’d never thought we’d ever do before.

If we have one thing to say after doing this issue, it’s to please, please take full advantage of the time you have here. You’ll never be able to get it back.