These days, “starting over” is a phrase that gets thrown around quite often. Sometimes, we take it upon ourselves to start over with the motivation of improving some aspect of our lives; whatever it is, it requires some aspect of throwing out the old and bringing in something refreshing and new. Other times, we’re forced to start over. Something circumstantial happens, sometimes without warning and we’re forced in some way to pick ourselves up and launch a hard restart. Either way, starting over can be difficult.
The Stute has faced the latter of starting over by being shifted from building to building throughout the past few years. Before I started at Stevens, The Stute was housed in Jacobus Hall along with many other student organizations. After the announcement of the creation of the University Center Complex (UCC), The Stute was moved to the Howe Center, which is where I attended my first Stute General Body Meeting. Soon after, The Stute was moved to the second floor of the former Student Center. Our office in the Student Center is where I spent most of my time on The Stute. And now, this year The Stute has moved to its new office in the UCC, where I hope it’s housed for a long time to come.
With all the moving we’ve done these past few years, The Stute has had a bit of a turbulent period. Each new office has had different space configurations, amounts of storage, and convenience for The Stute. But somehow, even with how quickly we’ve had to adapt to new environments, we’ve managed to make it work.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, The Stute really learned how to function efficiently through virtual environments. We got so used to working virtually that we even now sometimes have meetings over Zoom for convenience. We also offer hybrid meeting modes for our GBMs and Production Nights in order to accommodate everyone’s schedule. Due to this, we’ve found little use for our office, which currently is hardly usable and still crowded with unpacked boxes.
Apart from the ease of Zoom, there are a few other reasons we’ve been slow to unpack the office. First, is that we share a shared layout space with The Link. While it’s nice to have neighbors, there’s an influx of old yearbooks that currently take up a large portion of the shared space, making the shared space crowded and stuffy for meetings. Second, the size of our actual office is quite minuscule compared to our last office. The office is suitable for a group of two (maybe three) people to have a discussion, making it unusable for internal meetings. Third, our computers were not plugged in for a long time, resulting in us being forced to do the paper layout on our laptops. Fourth—and this may seem silly—we no longer have a pizza supplier. In previous years, The Stute would receive pizza in exchange for an ad in our paper. The pizza would be highly awaited during production—a treat in exchange for our hard work after a long day. But now with no pizza, there’s less incentive for us to join together in person.
Despite the challenges and disappointment with space, the goal for The Stute before the end of the semester is to finally get settled into our office. Through the whirlwind of classes, midterms, the work we normally need to do for The Stute, and the simplicity of working remotely, we’ve neglected cleaning up our office. We’ll hopefully be able to get back into the groove of having small meetings in the office, highlighting fresh layout pages together, and bonding over the stressfulness of production nights instead of having to face it alone.
Change is never easy. Depending on the severity of the change, it can be scary to change your routine, break bad habits, or make serious amends to significant parts of your life. But one thing I’ve learned from starting over is that the grass really is greener on the other side. The Stute has overcome every change thrown at it, and this new office space, I’m sure, will be no different.
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