At first, I recoiled when I was told to write a good-bye editorial by the Pauw Wow’s new Editor-in-Chief, Frank DeMichele—to me it screamed of senior year nostalgia.  But I also realized that—they need filler and the Editorial page was blank.  So I will take this opportunity to say a bit about what I have learned during my time as Editor-in-Chief and (mainly) to thank the folks that made this year’s Pauw Wow happen.
The first and most important thing I learned was never to underestimate people’s willingness to work.  Pride is an important motivator in the minds of people, and seeing one’s name beneath the title in a printed paper is always something to be proud of.  No one on our editorial staff gets paid, and everyone put in long hours and took heat for some of the things we did.  Many of us have no desire to become journalists or editors, but this experience has taught us how to better analyze the printed media, even as it appears to be dying out.
This brings me to my second major lesson:  a person’s major does not matter much.  Our staff contains students of Biotech, Computer Science, Political Science, History, Philosophy, and many other majors.  Freshman, if you are reading this, unless you want to enter into the hard sciences, almost everything in the humanities will treat you fine.  Just be exceptional at it.
Enough with that, time to treat the most important people who made this newspaper happen.  First, Frank DeMichele (the future chief) and Shishir Khadka are both consummate professionals in their design of the paper.  They were of equal measures creative and hardworking.  Often I went off to bed, leaving them with a mountain of text, some pictures, and the next morning I awoke to find the paper complete, beautifully designed, and ready to be sent off to the printers.  Frank and Shishir pioneered the Pauw Wow’s first forays into the realm of Web 2.0—our blog at PauwWow.com.
Besides these two exceptional editors, our copy editors made sure the articles were printed sounding as crisp and clean as possible.  They managed, on top of all their other reading, to read through each issue multiple times, usually in a two day span.  To them, I owe a great deal.
The other major figure I am indebted to is our advisor, Dr. Paul Almonte of the English Department.  He offered leadership and counsel, especially when I was uncertain how to proceed.  His guidance and suggestions improved the paper immeasurably, and when necessary, he gave us the constructive criticism we needed.  To him, all of us, and especially me, owe a great debt.
There are many others without whom none of this could happen, and I hope that none are offended that I was unable to mention them, but space and time considerations prevent it.  Your absence from this page is not an absence from my thanks.  Thank you all, and keep reading.