Dear Readers,
I really do love writing that. Dear Readers. I usually eschew “dear” as a term of address, finding it oddly intimate yet simultaneously stilted in the context of, say, an email or letter. But in cases such as this, there’s just no other word for it. Because you are so dear to me. Every part of this magazine is dear to me, from the writers to the illustrators to the editors to the copy editors to the layout designers to you, the readers. I’m thinking awfully hard about all the things this magazine has meant to me—laughing over Top 10 list contributions and staying up until the wee hours of the night and workshopping sentences in sprawling Google Doc comment chains and saying endless thank-yous over the course of a night. Thank you for your edits. Thank you for coming. Thank you for everything. Sometimes I think the biggest part of my job is being grateful.
It is such a difficult beast, saying goodbye. In Narrative this week, one of our graduating post- editors also writes about goodbyes, approaching the concept as she does all things: with poetry and loveliness. Our second Narrative writer imagines what her older brother would have been like, if she had one. The Feature looks towards superstitions, both personal and cultural. In A&C, one of our writers considers Drake as a figure in the media and discusses his recent album. The other contemplates a possible interview with a Grimm fairytale archetype as a means of processing the Club Q tragedy. Lastly, our Lifestyle writers think about fashion, friendship, and colors.
Well, here we are. Here I am, at the end of three years editing at this magazine, at the conclusion of a long string of weeks spent waiting for Thursday night. Our lovely prods, our little jokes, our scavenged pizza and spontaneous icebreakers and collaborative playlist a thousand miles long. I love post- for the people who were here when I began, curled on the Copy Couch in 195 Angell. I love post- for the era of Zoom prod nights, each lovely face rendered a pixelated postage stamp. I love post- for its future: I am so happy to be leaving it in Kimberly’s capable hands. All there is left to do now is say goodbye as I do at the end of every prod night: with the deepest, deepest appreciation.
