The sum of the parts

What resonates with me?

It's not any particular session, but the entire weekend so far. It's not any particular person, but everyone I've had the pleasure of meeting.

I know -- it's a vague and broad answer, but it's true. It's not the easy way out, either. I scratched my head and thought long and hard; I even took a lonely walk through the frigid air after lunch to clear my head. When I hear the old-timers talking about the First Amendment, it stirs something within me -- a sense of history, and, more than that, a sense of my place in it. When I see my fellow scholars defending the First Amendment, it fills me with hope. These people, this program -- they let me know, or more accurately, they demonstrate to me that I am not alone.

I am not alone in my passion and in my desire to be a good reporter. I am not alone in the problems that I face, which I especially saw in our small break-out sessions. I learned that many of my colleagues became reporters to tell the story of a group of people who would otherwise be ignored by the mainstream media. That's why I became a reporter, too.

So, really, it's unfair for me to single out any particular session, and I steadfastly refuse to do so.