As you’re reading this, we are no longer the Editors-in-Chief (sad face), instead we have passed on this beautiful paper to our wonderful successors: Eva and Padget!
We know you’ll miss us dearly: the endless chasing people down for interviews, stopping you in the hallway to ask for kids in the hall, sneaking into the back of your lit class to do Beacon work.
But, before we go, we want to give you some unsolicited parting advice.
First off, embrace the little moments in the day. One thing senior year and the stress of this paper has taught us that the only way to get through it is by being grateful for the small things.
A lunch with your whole friend group there (everyone free from revisions), the lethal gossip debrief in class, all the little things that make school suck a little less – trust us, you’ll miss it when it’s gone.
You don’t know if you don’t try! Talking to new people, trying new activities, there are so many people and things at JR that are waiting for you to discover them, and that’s only possible if you try.
A slightly odd piece of advice – push yourself and experiment with your style now! JR students are so accepting and have amazingly creative style, so embrace that while you can. This is the best place to do it. Soon, you might go to college and be surrounded by scary basic suburban people.
Not to be biased, but we also genuinely want you to join The Beacon! This paper has given us so much, and it is a phenomenal activity to accompany a student through their high school career. The Beacon has made us better writers, more inquisitive people, and harder workers. And college application writing went by in a breeze.
Our biggest piece of parting advice we want to leave with you: talk to more new people! Senior year, we’ve watched people reach across “friend group” lines more and make new connections that forced us to realize how much we’ve missed out on by isolating for most of high school. Talk to everyone. Our fellow Jackson-Reed students are actually super interesting!
Most importantly, we want to shout out all the people that helped us along the way.
Ms. Webb and Mr. Crocker – THANK YOU. Without your help, we never would have found the beautiful home that is the back of your classroom. Thank you for always letting us come in to work even when we are slightly disrupting your class.
Thank you to the teachers we harass endlessly for quotes. Shout out Mr. Geremia, Mr. Burgoyne, Ms. Bollinger, Ms. Collins, Ms. Postler, Dean Serraile.
Shoutout Principal Brown for always giving us your most diplomatic answer to our nagging questions.
Special shoutout to Dean Rogers – our ally in the hallways, always willing to fight for us and help us with what we need.
Thank you to Ms. Belew, our savior, who stepped up to advise us this year. Your kindness and leadership helped us through so many tough times this year.
Shout out to Stefan Fatsis, our journalistic advisor extraordinaire. You make the paper so much better.
Finally, a huge shoutout to all our fellow Beaconers for all their hard work and writing this year, not to sound cringy but genuinely none of this would’ve been possible without you.
We wish the best of luck to next year’s Beacon staff. We know you’ll make amazing papers and we hope you have a year less…. eventful than ours. •
