This is the last Corner post I will write during my internship at National Review. It’s one that I now compose with a sense of great accomplishment, one that is also very bittersweet.

I am proud of my time this summer here at NR, and I have enjoyed writing every day for a publication with such a great history and mission. Through my essays and posts, many of which were about Michigan elections, I have gained indispensable skills in writing and reporting through the amazing writers and editors here.

Though my time here has been a dream, I recognize that I now have a duty to use the lessons I’ve learned to better serve the conservative movement to which I want to devote my life.

No one will contradict me when I say that college students’ time outside of school is incredibly important. Our summers are not mere vacations. They present an opportunity for us to find valuable job experience in the real world, rather than being simply coddled by our campus administrators. That said, they are not purely self-serving, either. We are not here only to make career connections that we hope to leverage in the future.

Rather, I like to think of them as team practices with a professional team. The experiences we have and the connections we make are not only for our careers, but for our fight to preserve American traditions as well. We all have roles in this wonderful movement that has been nourished across decades and centuries by the great leaders who precede us. Those roles just might be different depending on where we are.

Our colleges are much like the minor leagues. We’re cultivating our skills and learning how to use them against our opponents who are doing the same. These internships are an incredibly important glimpse of what the major leagues are like, and we must then work to apply what we learn on campus.

For those of us entering our senior year in college, we have reached our last season in the minors. We understand the duty to use our experience to make our campuses better places for our fellow students, both conservative and liberal. We further understand that, after we graduate college, that obligation does not lessen, nor should our commitment to fulfilling it.

I am friends with many conservative students throughout the country, and I take inspiration from seeing their successes every day. They are doing their duty on their campuses, and I must do the same on mine and beyond it.

I will pledge to use what NR has taught me to bring the principles of our great movement to others at Michigan, who may not interact with them as much as I do. I promise not only to argue effectively for the intellectual ideas of limited government and individual rights, but also (and perhaps more importantly) to live out the values of kindness and respect for which NR stands.

Overall, I want to thank all of the great people I have had the privilege of working with these past couple of months. You have all taught me so many valuable lessons that I will never forget. As I go back to campus, I will not let you down.