We’ve all seen them. “Legislators respond to Vilack’s budget cuts.”

“The $78,000 restoration of Beardshear Hall .”

Stories that start and never end, the last line disappearing somewhere into the ad at the bottom of the page.

Typos, corrections, publishing problems – they are the bane of every newspaper in the country; the painful reminder that the rough draft of history can be pretty rough at times.

“Stupid Daily,” I imagine our readers saying. “They can’t even make sure the end of the story shows up.”

What do I say to that?

I wish I could say we do it on purpose, our secret way of testing our readers’ intelligence or something, but that’s not believable.

So I guess the best way to look at it is to think of the Daily as a big test journalism students take every day.

Each story is a test of our reporters’ accuracy and information-gathering skills. Each editor is tested on his or her grammar, punctuation and eye for detail. Each photographer is tested on his or her eye for a good shot. Each copy editor is tested on his or her ability to design a page, edit a story and make sure that it all goes together as it should.

Everyone in the newsroom is tested every day on his or her creativity and news judgment.

So we take the test – writing and editing the stories, taking the photos, designing the pages. And then the paper’s published and all of our readers get to see how we scored and grade us on the work we did.

Sometimes we pass with flying colors, and sometimes we really get cut off at the knees, and it stings for a while because the Daily is a very personal thing for its staff.

We spend the majority of our time here and a mistake in the Daily reflects on all of us.

No one wants to make a mistake.

Interesting what that kind of commitment does to people.

Speaking for myself, I have become a full-blown perfectionist. I had aspects of it before, but after the first week of publication this year I started down the road to hard core.

Never thought that would happen.

It’s most visible in the newsroom, although not limited to it. I read the front-page headlines backwards, forwards and backwards again. I double-check photo captions, pull quotes, and jumps to other pages. I read stories, looking for anything that might raise a red flag in my mind.

And I’m the fourth person to do it every night.

I never gave much thought to those little details before, but now my life seems to revolve around them. I can’t excuse myself for mistakes I might make; it doesn’t matter how late a night it was or how little sleep I had the night before.

Still, my parents and friends tell me this isn’t healthy, that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

I’m starting to come around.

Mistakes are going to happen; it’s inevitable when you work with people and it’s unrealistic to think one person can catch them all.

I could agonize over every typo and correction the Daily runs, but it won’t do any good. It’s just wasted energy.

It doesn’t change the fact that the Daily is a stellar newspaper. That we are in the running for a Pacemaker award this year, the equivalent of a Pulitzer among college newspapers.

It doesn’t change the fact that we have some of the most intelligent and talented people on campus in one room, sharing ideas and information everyone can benefit from.

It doesn’t change the fact that I look forward to going to work each day, whatever it may bring.

And it doesn’t change the fact that we are learning and improving with every issue we put out.

Still, sometimes it helps to remember the words of my childhood heroine, Anne of Green Gables, as I look at corrections on the front page.

“Tomorrow is whole new day with no mistake in it – yet.”

Andrea Hauser is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood. She is editor in chief of the Daily.