Each year, a chance to reflect

The Year in Review issue is perennially one of our paper’s most important.

I’m not saying that because I get paid to work here. I say it because it’s a chance to actually look at the big picture of what happened around us these past 365 days.

It’s easy as students to take a myopic view. Our lives consist of discrete benchmarks. First there’s midterms. Then there’s finals. Then we do it all over again. Sprinkle in some holidays for variety. The year is reduced to a series of goal posts and our ultimate aim is to reach the next one so we can start counting down again.

It happens to us here at the newspaper as well. It’s easy to get into the mentality that each day all you have to do is get a paper out and you have met your goal — you’re one step closer to completion of a year’s worth of work.

So even we sometimes have to sit back and realize just how much is going on.

We live in an incredible time and in an incredible place. Yet it’s easier here than almost anywhere else to be oblivious.

This is the part where you expect a cliché Ferris Bueller quote.

So here it is: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Some of what’s happened this past year — especially this semester, frankly — has been so outrageous that it’s been laughable. Who is going to forget Chancellor Thorp trying desperately to dance to “Thriller”?

But a better question might be, “Who will remember the Chapel Hill Museum, now that it is closed?”

Even bigger: This year saw a new Four-Year Tuition Plan, Academic Plan and Innovate@Carolina roadmap — all guiding documents for an immediate future impacted by unprecedented budget cuts.

And don’t think I am sparing mention of the NCAA investigation — what may have been the biggest news of the year for many of you. A year ago, Marvin Austin was still a student, minus some black diamond watches.

In some ways, 2010 was a green year for UNC. The school committed to breaking up with coal by 2020 after it looked like it could hit it off well with wood pellets.

And there have been physical changes as well. Greenbridge (a LEED certified building, sticking with the subject of environmentalism) now stands high on the skyline.

Soon, 140 West will join it. It will thankfully replace what a graduate student friend of mine lovingly refers to as a “panopticon” of a parking lot on Rosemary and Church streets — the one where you never knew if you were going to get ticketed and always paid in advance out of fear.

These are all stories you could easily have missed. And they are all stories you will find in this issue.
In many ways, this year is reminiscent of every other. There’s always news. Some years, former politicians get shouted off campus. Other years, the football team is revealed to have endemic cheating. Some years, we inaugurate a new chancellor. Other years, it’s a new UNC-system president.

But the blend is always unique. If I wasn’t allotted one cliché quote per column, I would say something about boxes of chocolate.

But seriously: It’s the unique annual mix that makes it worth giving pause, stepping back and seeing the year in full. And that’s the important lesson.

Cameron Parker is the Opinion Editor for the Daily Tar Heel. He is a junior economics and public policy major from Forsyth, GA.