The end: I leave the rest to you

And so it comes to this my friends! This is my last editorial before leaving my executive position on The Stute behind.

Last week I spoke about legacy, but now I’ll just talk about The Stute!

It is very strange. It feels like only yesterday I was given the privilege of being the 112th Editor in Chief (or whatever number we’re on at this point), yet, even though it feels so short a term, it is undeniable that a lot has happened.

When I became Editor in Chief, I was terrified. I had a bunch of staff members that hadn’t had the ability to really step up and be as amazing as the generation before them.

Needless, we began reorganizing The Stute into something a little more modern. There are hundreds of minor things that you as a reader probably don’t notice. We got rid of Adobe InCopy in lieu of using our website to edit and publish articles, events art distributed digitally without the usage of a whiteboard, the cameras have been organized, and so on.

I can honestly say that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do, and that pleases me.

But more over, I am pleased with the progress of the “makeshift” E-Board we had going into my term. I knew what I was doing, for the most part, but everyone else was a step or two behind, and I was so worried that we weren’t going to be able to function properly.

Not only did they pull it together (and fast) but kept it together better than any E-Board that I have seen with The Stute, and moreover maintained it so well that I think we only missed our deadline four or so times over the course of the year. To top it off, our positive attitudes and sense of direction pulled a phenomenal amount of newcomers to The Stute, a retention rate of over 75% from the Freshmen Weekend, which is utterly unheard of. I really couldn’t be more proud of them.

But, that said, I’m glad I am leaving. There are a handful of reasons, but the primary reason is one I swore I’d never let get to me: burning out. I talked many people out of taking on too much responsibility over the years, as Editor in Chief or not. If you take on too much, attempt to do a lot of things in a little bit of time, it is only a matter of time before that stress deforms your work ethic. I prided myself on 3.5 years of hard work coming in as Editor in Chief, and I said I’d never crack. Well, this position broke me really well. I think I was shattered by about issue five last semester. The amount of stress in this position, especially when you are focusing on reforming, is immense.

Not to mention that balancing The Stute with homework, co-op, family stuff, and managing my own apartment gets really tiring really fast.

Although it was stressful, I can’t say it was a bad time. We had wild fun with our terrible jokes and bingo board material, and we still managed to reinvent the newspaper into something really sleek and sweet.

Moreover, I am happy to hand The Stute off to a new E-Board, a new organization that is faster, more powerful, and a lot more stable that it has been in years prior. I am glad that the next set of E-Board members will not have to struggle with silly things like The Stute Archive Project and starting up an Alumni meetup, and stuff like that. I think, at some early point in this term I wrote an editorial about how difficult it is to get the ball rolling. Well, I got many things rolling in my time here, and it is a lot easier to stay on a path once the path is clear. This is, in my opinion, the place that the next E-Board will be in.

Given that, I suppose, the greatest gift I can give The Stute through my leaving: the future. That said, I am hardly the future of The Stute. I am a representation of the past and the present (for the time being), and my biggest goal was to hand The Stute off at the end of my journey to a capable set of hands who not only know what to do with the newspaper, but have plans on making it even better. They can choose to continue my legacy, and I am certain they will continue many of the traditions I have imposed and maintained, but the future is theirs, not mine,

The next generation of The Stute is upon us. It is going to be different, but I am certain it will be fantastic.

Sayonara, Stevens.