The Exonian Celebrates Editor In Chief’s Birthday and Reflects upon Her Email Writing Genius
By Jack Archer
Today, Thursday the 15th, is our very own Editor-in-Chief’s birthday. The Upper and Lower Board of The Exonian are thrilled that she has actually survived two-and a half terms of her arduous job.
To someone who doesn’t frequent the newsroom, her work might seem to consist of nothing more than sending mass emails once or twice a week. In truth, this is only like 90% of her job. Don’t think it easy, however. As the term drags on, the EIC must dig deeper and deeper into her knowledge of etiquette in order to come up with a greeting she hasn’t used yet.
Often, Brandes draws on current events, opening a particularly memorable email with, “Hope you’re having a great first day of classes and staying safe!” on September the 10th, which indeed happened to be the first day of classes. On September 12th, she hit us with “Hope you’ve had a wonderful first few days!” because, thanks to her acute observation skills honed by years of investigative journalism, she noticed that a few days had passed. On September 13th, upon realizing she needed to email the Upper Board for the third time in four days (it’s the kind of the only way we get stuff done), she greeted us with “Hello Again!” because she had said hello to us before, and now she was saying hello again.
Sometimes, Anne decides on a more casual route. On October 2nd, in her second email to the entire Exonian club list, she knew she had to greet each and every member of our enormous club. And Brandes found a way to do that in just two words: “Hello everyone.” Two words. 322 members. Still wonder why she’s Editor-in-Chief?
I’ve spent hours poring over every message sent from the Executive Board, trying to glean the secrets of email greetings. I never struggle to find past emails from the fearless leaders of The Txonian, because all of them glow a nice bold blue in my inbox. Not exactly sure why this happens, but I do read them carefully. I’m certain the examples above are merely the tip of the electronic iceberg (can’t use real ones anymore—those things are so tiny by now the metaphor doesn’t even work). Sometimes I’m amazed I get to hang out in the news room and make memes of these guys. On behalf of the Humor Page, we hope that Anne has an awesome birthday, laughs at all our jokes and that we didn’t take too many years off her life by trying to publish every bad photo of her we have.