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The hardest part of writing is deciding when to stop.

It doesn’t matter where you start, as you can later retain or discard any of your first words, phrases or even numerous pages. But arriving at a point where you can say, “That’s it, I’m done,” is, to me, perhaps the most difficult part of the process.

It’s not just finding the perfect ending (or even a moderately satisfactory one) that’s the toughest element. Rather, good writing relies heavily on rereading and editing until you reach a place where you can turn it in or see it published.

On the Daily Bruin copy desk – where I’ve spent the majority of my hours at The Bruin – the term for this existential place of conclusion is “approved copy.”

But approved doesn’t mean perfect, and while the published product is often impressive, it is still a rough draft.

Though at least four or five pairs of eyes read everything that appears in The Bruin prior to publication, I still pick up the paper and read it with pen in hand, marking up mistakes or instances where I disagree with editing choices. I even disagree with some of my own decisions when I see them the next day.

Perhaps the paper would look more pristine if we had a week to work on it. Maybe everything would be perfect if we were a monthly. But if that were the case, we wouldn’t be as effective or as efficient, and we definitely wouldn’t be the Daily Bruin.

Being a daily doesn’t come from having a name and printing schedule that demands you publish every day; it comes from the staff’s consistent hard work, passion and dedication. The hundreds of Daily Bruin staff members I’ve had the privilege of working with in the past four years have inspired me more than any news event or any finished product.

Out of necessity to maintain sanity and inspire progress, we can’t dwell on past mistakes or successes. We can’t plan every detail ahead of time because, well, news just happens.

Our best planning and preparation for tomorrow’s paper is what we’ve done before today: the tough calls we’ve already answered and the stories we’ve already completed, even if they stand theoretically unfinished, both in print and on the Internet.

While coming to completion points can be nebulous, Bruin staffers are aided by daily deadlines, newsworthiness and editors who enforce those deadlines.

But deciding when your own career at The Bruin should end is even more undefined, ungoverned. Even though graduation forces many of us out of Kerckhoff 118, the departure is bittersweet. I’ve had a taste of it already.

I left The Bruin a few weeks early to train in Philadelphia for an internship at The Washington Post, and though I was relieved to be done with The Bruin, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

Every day of our training, we were allotted 30 minutes to read “our paper” online. Internet time was a precious and scarce commodity – it was like living through 1997 again.

I did enjoy reading The Post, but whenever my professor wasn’t looking and I felt daring enough, I would move my cursor and type in a different, unapproved address: www.dailybruin.com. Because when I think about “my paper,” I instinctually turn to The Bruin.

The Bruin will always be my paper. I’ll always feel proud when we write a phenomenal story or scoop the Los Angeles Times. And I’ll still cringe and feel genuinely embarrassed when we mess up, even if it’s only a misplaced comma.

All of us, those departing and remaining, are part of what The Bruin is and continues to be. Predictably, future staffers will sit on the news couch, thumbing through the bound archives to see how we covered the cadaver scandal or coach Lavin’s firing. They will no doubt compare any future student government elections to the elections we’ve covered.

Our dedication and final product set the groundwork for them, and provide a rough draft for others to polish by adding more layers to the Daily Bruin’s narrative of UCLA history.

In the past four years, I’ve gone from being called “Copy Girl” by an editor in chief who didn’t even know my name to leading that section, and then overseeing all of daily production. Part of me still doesn’t feel “done,” even after all those years of enforcing deadlines and straining to meet them – or missing them by minutes or hours.

We each leave The Bruin similar to the stories and pages we’ve created – a little unfinished and constantly preparing for the next day’s product. We may not feel ready, and may have very little planned for the next chapters in our lives, but if The Bruin has taught us anything, it’s that we can succeed in any capacity if we have passion, work harder than we ever thought possible, and surround ourselves with inspirational colleagues.

Throughout her four years at The Bruin, Bonos served as managing editor, copy chief, dating columnist and resident punner. She plans to pursue a career in journalism.