As if you weren’t already excited enough about the semester coming to an end, another momentous ending is here as well — my time as opinion editor has done up and gone. But after merely 27 columns, more than 100 issues and countless hours of staring at a computer screen pasting your letters into a little box, it still seems like only yesterday I came to be the editor of your opinions.

It is a somewhat poignant occasion for me, leaving all you little lovelies behind and moving on to bigger and better things. As I hand you off to someone else, I can’t help but reminisce about all we’ve experienced together — the tailgating fiasco, numerous student athlete mishaps, the Bush administration’s release of “Funniest Home Videos — Bush Speaks,” (wait, they didn’t put that out yet?), catty comments about feminazis and other “angry feminists” — and wonder why I love you all so much. But I do.

I’ve gained a few friends from my outpourings of opinion, and even more enemies. But for friends and enemies alike, I still have to praise the wonderful Mother Earth for blessing me with the chance to walk away from this desk a more well-rounded person than I was when I came to it.

But enough of the sap.

On to the good stuff.

If there’s anything I’ve come to realize as true in my time with you, it’s this wonderful old adage: Opinions are like assholes — everyone’s got one, and they all stink. That’s the honest-to-god truth. In the grand scheme of things, I realize my opinion doesn’t and shouldn’t matter to anyone, and that you, especially, couldn’t care less if I expounded on the oppression of women in a patriarchal society or my indignation at having never yet gone sledding.

Yes, I grew up in Iowa. What self-respecting Iowan hasn’t flown down a snow-covered hill on something flat or sled-like and experienced the thrill of getting snow shoved down their pants on the way? Aren’t you indignant, too?

It’s hard for me to imagine life now apart from all of this hullabaloo surrounding the opinion pages. I will no longer be able to keep my finger on the pulse of Iowa State’s oh-so-exciting public discussion of current issues with it’s accompanying name-calling and discrediting of sources. I’ll miss rolling out of bed in the morning and finding letters waiting for me in my personal e-mail railing against my unpatriotism and/or comparing me to Hitler in my “sexist” feminist viewpoints.

Ah, the memories …

I will hold this time close to my heart, if only as a reminder of how much work is left for those of us who push for change in this world. Just yesterday I personally received a very polite e-mail from a young man I’ve been debating with over my columns. In it he declares, “Everything in this e-mail should lead you to realize that men are the superior sex.” His reasoning went something like this: Women make 70 cents to every dollar men make because men have done more valuable things than women for society.

In all seriousness, he went on to say, “What did the woman invent? Not the light bulb, electricity, airplanes, automobiles, computers or anything else of significance. Thanks for inventing the pound cake, lord knows we couldn’t live without that.”

Apparently women like Gertrude Elion, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who invented numerous life-saving drugs, Stephanie L. Kwolek, inventor of Kevlar (used in bulletproof vests) and Marion Donovan, inventor of the disposable diaper, never existed in his world.

It’s all very amusing, I know, but his earnestness calls for contemplation.

I’m not trying to say this is a prevalently held viewpoint — at least 99 percent of the general population doesn’t think this way. But from the strength of the resentment, anger and superior attitude I’ve sensed in this person’s writing, one must question what kind of progress is being made here.

My guess is hardly any at all — this is also illustrated by the increasingly exaggerated standards to which men, as well as women, are held in society. I’m sorry to disappoint anyone who believes I’m a “hypocritical female elitist,” but I, along with many other feminists, support men’s movements like ending circumcision and discrimination in child custody cases.

I have only supported my own causes because it seems no one else will. This, I believe, is the most important lesson I will take away from this job — if you don’t speak up and make your voice heard, you will be marginalized and forgotten. Once you are forgotten, you no longer exist. And if you don’t exist, well … you get the picture.

But now my time to speak has come and gone. The future is in your hands — do something with it.