I woke up Sunday morning with the realization that on the following Tuesday - today - the last issue of the Justice under my authority would be printed. Today's issue is my 25th and last issue as editor-in-chief of this newspaper. After 25 tireless Monday nights - or Tuesday mornings, as most would see it - and 25 tired Tuesdays, I'm done. This 54-year-old establishment will be passed on to another aspiring Brandeis journalist, as has been done since the Justice was born.Over the course of my year as editor, my reasons for continuing to sacrifice at least 40 hours a week to a job for which I received no pay changed quite a bit. I decided to run for the job in the first place because I love the idea of journalism and the media.

The "Fox News effect" may have caused many to forget that the media is the last line of defense against government encroachment and mismanagement. The United States was founded as a country that would exemplify government by the people that would serve the people only as much as the people wanted it. Within the government, we have three branches that serve to check and balance each other. Journalists are the officials of the fourth, independent branch. We may be constant cynics, but a society needs its watchdogs.

Hard work at the Justice got to me, however, and this grand notion of the role of journalists ceased to hold me down. I then began to learn of the history of the Justice as an organization, and I found out that editors and important writers all over the United States are part of the legacy of this newspaper. Thomas Friedman and Martin Peretz are two of many who began their journalistic careers with the Justice. Still, even the idea of being one in a line of editors who have gone on to achieve some degree of importance could not convince me to give up sleep one night of every week.

Just a few weeks ago, as my desire to edit another page of Arts copy waned, another aspiring editor showed me a quotation he had found on the Web site of the Cornell Daily Sun by the author Kurt Vonnegut. As editor of the Sun during the 1940s, Vonnegut came to find his job one worthy of engagement week after week. He loved his job, and he believed it was one worthy of his doing.

"All the other university people, teachers and students alike, were asleep," Vonnegut wrote years later. "They had been playing games all day long with what was known about real life."

"We on The Sun were already in the midst of real life. By God, if we weren't!" he continued. "We had just designed and written and caused to be manufactured yet another morning newspaper for a highly intelligent American community of respectable size."

When I read Vonnegut's words, and as I write them now, I am moved. The happiness he derived from his work was so simple in its origin; I did not realize until I read them that the sheer fact of the newspaper's consistent existence, read every week by brilliant students pleasantly unaware of its genesis was enough for me to go on working.

Vonnegut has given me solace in knowing that I accomplished something worthwhile in the 12 short months of my life that my editorship has occupied. In all my time as editor, I was always cautious not to tell too many people where I spent my Sundays and Mondays. When someone would approach me and ask if I worked at the Justice, I'd often say simply that I did indeed write for the paper. I never knew why I was hesitant to take credit for a newspaper I am so proud of, but I believe I have found my answer in Vonnegut's words.

I suppose I wanted the Justice simply to exist, not as my creation nor as the creation of its 16 committed - and equally hard-working - editors, nor even as the work of its many writers, but simply as a source of information, consistent and influential, week in and week out.

"I am an atheist, as some of you have gleaned from my writings," Vonnegut added to his thoughts. "But I have to tell you that, as I trudged up the hill so late at night and all alone, I knew that God Almighty approved of me."

I am also an atheist, but as I climbed up the steps to Reitman Hall from our basement office in Usdan, or walked past a sleeping Massell to get home to Rosenthal from Shapiro or most recently trudged through Ridgewood to get to my quiet, sleepy Ziv, I have learned to believe in purpose. I hope everyone else leaves college with some sense of purpose in daily life. I wouldn't have given up this year at the Justice for any amount of extra sleep or free time one could offer me.