I’m a follower. Not always, and not even usually, but certainly sometimes. I like doing things for myself and I can be indignant, but I can also recognize when the path already taken is the right one to take. I don’t see any shame in that.  

My brother Peter was a cherub in 2005. He was editor of our high school paper, The Chronicle, after that. Then he went to Medill.

My brother Peter and I posed for a picture last year.

So far, that’s been my path too. And I’m okay with that. I’d even argue that it’s made my experience – at least as a cherub, as I haven’t gotten to the other two yet – that much richer.

He’s been here all summer working at the Chicago Reader and the Summer Northwestern. He lives in a house near North campus, and I can convince him to stroll over to Jones Residential College if he’s in a good mood. At the very least, we meet up every weekend. Sometimes it’s just coffee, and sometimes it’s dinner and whatever we feel like doing afterward, but it’s always there, steadfast and reliable.

If anybody’s an expert (or thinks he is,) on life as a cherub or as an undergrad at Medill, it’s him. Though he conveniently forgot to tell me about the all day story and other cherub surprises, he remembers almost everything else. He remembers the bad Hinman cafeteria food (which gets talked about so much that it almost seems like a cliché at this point), he remembers what it’s like to have a story ripped to shreds, and he remembers the best way to break floor hours without getting caught, not that I’ve ever done that.

He appreciates my instructor stories or my Kupetz quotes, and he requires far less explanation than anybody at home does. Most of all, he assures me that being here is important, but not so much so that I can’t have any fun. “It’s just cherubs,” he always says. And that helps.

I could do this on my own, without his help and without any prior knowledge of what was waiting for me in Fisk Hall or Hinman or Jones. I could have come in without the advice to soak in every minute I get to spend with John Kupetz. And I could have come in without knowing that there was a Red Mango on Davis street. I’m confident that I would, like every other cherub here, have figured it out eventually.

But I didn’t have to. And maybe that’s taking the easy way out. But sometimes it’s okay to let someone pave the road first and know that they’ll leave you your own potholes to maneuver. I may have been familiar with the layout of Evanston, but I had to meet the all day story characters for myself.