Last Writes

For 136 years, The Exonian has been a record of life at Exeter. By flipping through its pages, one can learn of the school’s biggest announcements, events, debates, matches, jokes and so much more. Over the past 30 issues, the 136th Board has done its best to capture our Exeter experience, as well as yours. In the process, we have learned the ins and outs of putting together a newspaper. We have learned how to write and edit, how to work as a team, how to run a business and a website, and how to spend hundreds of hours working in the newsroom and still look forward to going back week after week. But what allowed us to put in the time and effort to learn these things was perhaps the most important of all.Exeter is filled with brilliance and places a premium on intellect. In a community of the very best, to be anything less can feel unacceptable and we often treat it is as such. As a result, the easy choice is apathy. If a student appears to be indifferent, others can’t indict him or her for being less than perfect, and he or she supposedly won’t feel bad about it. "Whatever" is an easy mantra to adopt. Yet over the past year, the most important thing we have learned is to truly and wholly care about something. We spent our Wednesday afternoons in the newsroom working on something we feel passionate about, and the payoff was worth even the vulnerability that caring exposed us to hundreds of times over. The Exonian taught us how to care unapologetically, and for that we are forever grateful.NEWSAs Jay Lee’s atrocious "Throwback" playlist reverberates through the newsroom for the last time, we are, for the first time ever, dancing. Even the autotuned, shrill and warbling voice of Miley Cyrus singing "Party in the USA" feels sentimental at this moment. The past year was "definitely not a Nashville party."As the great social activist Mary Jones once said, "our duty is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." We brought you conversations on intimidation, we brought you discussions on the academy’s future, and we brought you beloved Cosgrove on "grinding."We gave it our all, Exeter; we dedicated 300 hours, that’s 12.5 days of our illustrious lives.We are: Alice McCrum, Sam Yoo and Catherine Zhu.Soon a fresh batch of doe-eyed uppers will bring you the news. They are: Rex Tercek, Alex Zhang and Rex Bone.Thank you for everything."The club can’t even handle (us) right now."We are peacocks, and we are ready to fly.OPEDWriting an opinions piece is like asking people to say bad things about you. It’s like asking Dean Cosgrove to call you in for "a talk." It’s like working five hours on an article someone in PO recycles in five seconds. Writing an opinions piece is like drinking from the fountain of knowledge and choking.At least writing a good one is.(Shout out to the veggie straws and the snap stories. Sorry about the oxford commas. Don’t ever let them shut you down. Love live the truth. Get psyched for Julie, Michael and 137. )"Yay oped yay ya ya y yay opinions." – Danna Shen"I also work for PEAN." – Zoha QamarLIFESitting in the newsroom for quite possibly the last time, we remember the pains and gains of the paper; the hardships, the battles, the victories, and more importantly the dysfunctional family that was the Exonian Arts and Features Section. The dream team: Monica Aviña Acosta, Michael Daniel Baldyga and Millicent Grace Dunstan. We tried with all the might we could muster to improve our section, to draw in the readers, to reach out to the Exeter community, to change peoples’ lives for the better. Movie reviews, tacky crosswords, annoying alliterations and other shenanigans were, yes, at times necessary. But we are so much more than that. In the wise words of Baldyga, "it was diesel."And so will be our legacy: William Anthony Belmont, Jeffrey Jordan Mellen and Joyce Sasikarn Tseng.SPORTSWe came in with a bang. From the ashes of the phoenix that was 135 we rose. We carried on the legacy of the sports section and are proud to be turning it over to a great crop of former, dedicated sports writers. Long live the Exonian sports editors: Janice Chung, Tommy Miller and Andrew Poggione.HUMORMr. Hearon is having our class write a series of "Epic Similes" as a short writing assignment this week. I hope that, for us humor editor’s last writes, I may complete this writing assignment a few days early.Just as the graceful salmon fights his way through the oncoming torrent of a roaring river, only to be eaten by a bear while reminiscing on how fun the river was, remembering that it has done its job by delivering its young to the cold waters below, Katie and I are simultaneously ecstatic that we’ve left behind not two, but three editors (gettin’ maverick-ey), and while the claws and jaws of Jack Hirsch tear through our fishy flesh, we are grieved at the loss of our Humor Page river.Unlike the salmon, our departure is a minimal one: we can see our offspring flourish in their own, and others’ mediocrity; we can look back at our river of upper spring and terms spent thousands of miles away and say "we made it;" or at least we tried; we can mathematically calculate the caloric content of every slice of pizza we’ve eaten in the newsroom over the past year; we can look at our failed coup d’etats of Exec and say, "maybe next year Kevin and Audrey Will (bah-dum, tss);" but perhaps most unlike the salmon, Katie and I can look at the 137th board and say, "congratulations, good luck and we’re glad it’s not us."PHOTO:Dear photogs:I’ve had a transcendent experience; bring light over our minds. ​136 out.