When I started Westark College in 1999, I only had a vague idea about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Twenty years later, it’s just now beginning to come into focus. But at the time I was interested in public speaking. As it turns out, that’s not an actual major. Plus, if you want to speak in public, it helps to have something interesting to say, and–well–I was nineteen and mostly concerned about my hair. So I did the best I could for a major–mass communications–and then signed up for a public speaking class, as well as history, biology, and–almost as an afterthought–something called Publications Staff.

Although I didn’t know it until the first day of class, I’d unwittingly signed up to work on the college yearbook. Incidentally, this is not a good way to get laid. But looking back, it was perhaps one of the best decisions I ever made, if you could even rightly say that I made it. I mean, it just sort of happened.

For the next four years, the room where yearbook met was my home. Of the people I still talk to from college, all of them were on the yearbook staff. Because of yearbook I learned about layout and design–how to make anything from pictures on a wall to text on a page look appealing–which has come in handy more times than I can count. Because of yearbook I learned to take pictures, which later led to my working for a wedding photographer, which later led to my opening the dance studio in the photographer’s building. Because of yearbook I learned to write better and to edit, which later led to my work for a local magazine and obviously plays a huge part in what I’m doing right this very minute.

In short, yearbook changed my entire world.

At the center of the yearbook staff was Lori Norin, our adviser. Life is so funny. I can remember where I was sitting when I met her, and there weren’t any signs–any flashing lights or letters from angels saying, “This is an important moment,” but it was. Lori was the one who taught me everything I know about layout and design, the one who taught me about taking good photos, the one who taught me to write better and to edit. She was the one who made me fall in love with red ink pens.

I think after my first year on staff–maybe my second–Lori asked me to be the yearbook editor. So for the next two or three years, that’s what I was. Each semester the staff would change a little, but it was mostly the same people. We’d come in, stay late, and work in a windowless room under fluorescent lights and the wisdom of a sign on the wall that said, “You’re never done, you’re just out of time.” That was the room where I got the nickname “Pants” because I used to wear vintage plaid pants on the regular. That was the room where I coined the phrase “another opportunity to excel,” which I’d say with sarcasm every time a hard drive would crash or Lori would mark up my work with red ink and say I needed to start over.

Living with your parents? Another opportunity to excel.

I think it’s fair to say that Lori and I became friends. Her office was just across the hall from the yearbook room, and I’d run back and forth with questions, edits. I’d work on the spare computer in her office, lean over her desk with page desgins filled with Lorem ipsum dolor sit, which doesn’t mean anything but is used to indicate where text will go once it’s written. Since both of us had stomach problems, Lori and I would share antacids. You’d walk in the yearbook room or Lori’s office, and next to a pile of ZIP drives and undeveloped rolls of film would be a bottle of Mylanta Ultra Tabs–or two.

In addition to all the work, I’m assuming that Lori and I used to talk about our personal lives. We had to have done that. We ate so much Easy Mac together. What else would we have done? Her daughter Alexis was always around, even on the staff for a while. Lori would show us pictures of their family vacations–they loved Hawaii. It’s funny how the specific conversations have faded away, but the facts and feelings are there. I just remember the Mylanta Ultra Tabs, I remember her guidance, and I remember we used to laugh together.

In 2001 I graduated with an Associate Degree, but I kept taking classes that interested me and stayed on the yearbook staff. In 2002 Westark became University of Arkansas – Fort Smith. In 2003 the journalism department was terminated, and so was the yearbook program. And that was that–all good things must come to an end. When that final book was finished, Lori and the staff and I went out to eat, and they gave me two tickets to see the Broadway musical Swing!, which was about swing dancing and was touring in Fayetteville.

Over the years I saw Lori a few more times. I remember stopping by her office once and talking about how “kids these days” considered their cell phones to be extensions of themselves, which is why they couldn’t put them down during her lectures. Then one year Lori and another instructor wrote a book about funny things that had happened in their classes. So I bought a copy, and guess what? She included the fact that I used to say, “another opportunity to excel.” Of course, she changed “me” into a girl, another editor who used to work on staff, but still.

Four years ago, Lori died of pancreatic cancer. The last time I saw her, she was asleep in a hospital bed. Alexis spoke at the funeral. She said one of the things she remembered about her mom was that anytime someone rushed into her room or office with a crisis, Lori would throw her hands up as if she were being robbed and say, “NOT MY PROBLEM.” I thought, Oh my god. I’d forgotten. She DID do that.

I still can’t help but smile whenever I think about it.

A few days ago I posted that I was in Springfield, and Alexis reminded me that she lives there now and suggested that we have lunch. So for two hours this afternoon (that flew by), we caught up. Mostly we talked about our lives now, our jobs (she happens to have one), her dad, her five-year-old son. But of course we talked about yearbook, talked about Lori. I told Alexis that I thought Lori saw potential in me that I didn’t see in me, that she believed in me long before I knew how to believe in myself.

Alexis said, “She was good at that.”

The drive home today was overcast by a thick, gray sky and a steady drizzle. Just south of Fayetteville I stopped for gas and McDonald’s, switched from listening to a podcast to today’s hit music. Back on the road and driving through the mountains felt like a scene from a movie. The clouds hung low on the horizon just above eye level, kind of a mist, kind of a fog. They seemed to float along like a lost ship at sea–aimless.

When I think about my years in college, when I think about Lori, there are times that it feels as if I too were aimless, a lost ship at sea. I look at pictures of myself in plaid pants with blonde tips and remember a time when I was so far in the closet, so stressed out about–something–that I was chucking tablets of cherry chalk down my throat by the dozen. Still, I know now that none of us is ever really lost. At least we’re never really alone. For always there is someone to help point your ship in the right direction, someone who sees you when you can’t see yourself. And maybe you’re not lucky enough to talk to that person one last time, but there will be days when their memory stands beside you like the tallest mountain and surrounds you like a mist, something you might pass through on your way from one world to another.