I have always been relatively behind the curve when it comes to milestones in life.

Obviously, I blame my parents for this abnormality. Born in September, they had the choice of making me the oldest kid or the youngest in my grade, and wanting to believe their firstborn was exceptionally gifted, pushed me into preschool early, forever cementing my status as the token “young one.”

I struggled through a year and half of bar and bat mitzvahs before it was my turn on the bema. The appeal of boy bands didn’t hit me until they were on their way out. I was the last one to get a driver’s license and spent my junior year of high school bumming rides to avoid the bus. For the sake of full disclosure, I’ll admit that by the time I had my first real kiss, most of my peers were several bases ahead of me. I reached legal drinking age many agonizing months after nearly all of my classmates. And at 21, I am just now getting my 12-year molars.

So while I never particularly enjoyed always being a step behind my peers, I accepted it as a simple fact of life and settled into the comfort of knowing I’d always be late to the game.

When I got to college, I thought that maybe I would finally be able to catch up — or at least speed up — to the pace set by the masses.

I joined a few clubs, rushed a sorority, pregamed on football Saturdays, hung out with the kids on my floor, talked shit about my GSIs, drank crappy beer and pulled all nighters. By all accounts, I was on par with the rest of my class, on track to becoming a standard college student.

And despite the repetitiveness of my actions, I was completely content in my consistent and homogenous bubble. Trying something new meant getting a different dressing on the same salad I ordered at the restaurant I ate at all the time. I knew what I liked and I stuck with it.

Three years later, I was still coasting along, doing what I’d been doing since freshman year with the same people I’d been doing it with in the same places as always. The routine of my freshman, sophomore and junior years was beginning to lose some of its former luster.

I jokingly referred to what was afflicting me as ennui — a feeling of inexplicable listlessness — but the more I said it, the less funny it got. Even a brief stint abroad during winter 2009 couldn’t pull me out of the funk I’d fallen into. I still loved my friends and the University, but the summer before my senior year found me sitting opposite a psychologist once a week, trying to figure out what was bugging me.

After several weeks and several payments, the problem was exposed as a case of the doldrums. I was sad about my impending graduation. I worried about my prospects after college. I wondered if my relationships would be the same when everyone returned to Ann Arbor.

I was stuck in a serious rut that was a result of minimal variation in my habits and an inherent fear to move outside of my comfort zone.

There was no flash of light, no epiphany or revelatory moment, but I realized something had to change if I was going to truly embrace my last year on campus. In keeping with the theme of this issue, I’ll say that my senior year bucket list came to consist of one major goal: try something completely new.

Enter The Michigan Daily.

Traditionally, students get involved with the paper earlier in their college careers rather than later, work their asses off in the name of editorial freedom through the first half of their senior year and then take a much-needed break during their final semester.

Keeping with my own personal tradition, I was late to this phenomenon.

So now, rather than spending my weeknights drinking with the rest of the senior class, I’m in the newsroom, one of only a handful of second-semester seniors still on staff.

Now bear with me for a moment as I am a senior and we tend to get sentimental. I won’t get into specifics or cheesy, emotional details, but I will say this about my time at the Daily: what began as a whim and a group of people who were merely acquaintances quickly evolved into a deep respect for the tradition of the paper and true friends.

You know a relationship is getting serious when the realization hits that you talk to your editors more than your own parents. But despite the disagreements over headlines, page layouts, sentence structure and where we’d eat dinner, my colleagues in the newsroom became my extended family.

Most are younger than me and at first I was naturally inclined to think I knew better. But I quickly learned to shut up and listen. I now respect this group of amazing people more than I think I could ever effectively convey to them.