Rise and shine

This past winter break was my last winter break ever. It feels like I graduated high school just last summer. Everything is coming together so fast, and it’s weird to wake up thinking that in a mere five months I’ll be out of here!

I didn’t really do much during the time off. I spontaneously got a seasonal job and worked a ton of hours before Christmas. I figured it would be a good chance to try retail, since I’ve never done it before. From Christmas to New Year’s, I went home and spent time alternating between watching anime on my bed and on my living room couch. It was by far the weirdest week in my Stevens career — zero classes, appointments, or meetings on my Google Calendar for a full week.

I was able to catch up with my friends from high school. Graduation is approaching for most of us, but it’s interesting how different some of our paths are and will be. I was happy to just be in their presence. I think out of all of them, I was the one whose personality changed the most thanks to none other than Stevens. Nonetheless, spending time with them made me feel less nervous about graduating — my friends and I may meet up less frequently and have different paths, but we’ll always care about each other and share fond memories.

I don’t want to go back to classes. It’s a semester of many lasts, and I wish time didn’t pass as quickly as it does. I can feel Senioritis creeping on me — the lack of consequences if I skip class or don’t submit a project worth 30% of my grade (this may or may not have happened last semester). There are only seven more editorials left for me, and I’m working hard to wrap up on so many projects.

This editorial could have been very different considering some of the events that took place in recent weeks (see our whole newspaper, honestly). We’ll just have to wait and see whether anything changes at this school besides how many buildings or students there are. The longer current students have to wait for a response to their frustrations, the more it proves that we are valid in our feelings and that it was valid to protest.

These are students who spend hours and hours per day working to make the school a better place for other students, for free, who are literally screaming at the top of their lungs to make things different, make things better. For how much longer will you ignore your most passionate student leaders, those who are willing to risk it all to evoke change?

Limiting your feedback to only the new SGA Cabinet, the babies you think you can intimidate and groom, as a response, proves that you just want the conversation to die down and go away, not actually have a real one. When will Stevens wake up and acknowledge that it’s in their best interest to work with students who are already trying so hard to have their voices heard?