Ed Board Farewell: Senior editors perform Rainbow Connection

Dear Next Year’s Editors,

Thank you all for the amazing work you did this year; we hope you enjoyed all of the Review hijinks as much as we did. Whether it was making a weekly post schedule or collaborating on a cross-platform piece, it’s truly been an honor to work with you all. The Review thrives when editors work together well, and we know that you will all continue to do amazing work next year. You wrote very nice farewells for all of us, so it’s only fair that we one-up you right back!

Sophie Caldwell and Iris Chen:

We can truly say that The Review is the most amazing group of people we have ever met. We will miss you all more than you know. To next year’s team, we hope you know that we have the utmost confidence in you. We have seen how incredibly hard you work, and even more importantly, how well you work together. It has been such a privilege to see you all grow as editors and people this year, and we know that you will bring so many amazing talents to The Review next year. You all are such wonderful, special people, and we can’t wait to see you shine. We will happily be here for support and online hugs whenever you need them — but we know you’ll be just fine. We love you crazy kids (though some of you are probably older than Iris). Don’t be strangers!

Eli Maierson:

This year on The Review was one of the most successful in its long history and, in my own experience, easily the most fun. It was a true honor to watch all of you improve your strengths, mitigate the few problems we had all year and grow into leaders. I am so proud of your writing, editing, designing and photography chops, but more importantly, I’m proud of the way you all learned from and supported one another. Whether it was Leila keeping everyone on track, Abigail and Laney writing captions as a team, Mia bringing food for the umpteenth time or Izzy and Sophia enjoying the chaotic energy between Prithvi and Stephen, you all have truly developed into a print team and family. I love you all, and if you ever need a headline that slaps as hard as Prithvi hits Stephen, you know who to call. ?

Prithvi Krishnarao:

As Chance said, “The people’s champ must be everything the people can’t be.” This quote has guided much of my work in The Review. I know we all at some point wanted to slap Stephen, and I thus acted how a people’s champ must act. No one else had the power to export on Indesign, and I acted again as the people’s champ. It’s been an honor to have this responsibility and I truly had some of my most fun moments of high school in this adventure with y’all, but it is time for me to pass it down to y’all. This year, y’all have never ever ceased to surprise me. Leila – I have never known a photographer who has ever dared to set a finger on Indesign until you. Your work ethic is something I look up to and wish I could have, and I am so incredibly proud of everything you’ve done and the incredible attitude you bring every day. Mia – the ideas you come up with are better than anything I can possibly do and you truly know how to lead through example. Y’all aren’t EICs because we love you and vowed to quit if y’all weren’t (true story though), but because you have truly inspired awe in everyone that has seen the way y’all work and the loving community y’all strive to create. There’s no doubt in my mind that design is in safe hands next year, and I can’t wait to see what y’all are going to do!

Stephen Kim:

Ignore Prithvi’s fascination with physically abusing me. He’s also not a champ of the people. But he is right about one thing: I am truly an awesome human being. In fact, I think I’m one of the best Creative Directors you’ve ever seen. Did you see that centerspread? Ok. Now that I’m done one-upping Prithvi, I’ll get serious for a moment. Mia and Leila, my beautiful, hardworking, kind-hearted and incredibly disrespectful children – you have a lot to live up to. But also, I expect you to surpass us next year. Let me give you some advice – always be approachable, open, and a friend to your staffers. As a leader, it’s not only your responsibility to make The Review as good of an issue as it can be, but also an organization that’s worth being a part of. I hope that Prithvi, Clara and I were able to make your stay on The Review just a bit more enjoyable, and I hope you can do that for other staffers in the future. Leila, you’re such a stupidly hard worker that it baffles me, and I’m proud of you. Mia, your talent as a jack-of-all-trades is going to serve you well, and I’m so excited to see what you do. Most importantly, play off of each other’s strengths and learn as much as you can from each other, and the people around you. Clara is always open to coming to campus at a moment’s notice to help you out. My point is, we’re always here when you need us. Don’t be a stranger, and don’t lose contact with your mother, Stephen.

Clara Brotzen-Smith:

Mia and Leila, y’all are gonna kill it next year. Your collective talents span so many areas of the paper— from page design to photography, writing and illustration. The breadth of the skills you two bring to the table is a testament to your adaptability and hard work.

Leila, I remember the first few times I had you work on layout— you said you didn’t know the first thing about design. Now, you craft whole pages, creating design schemes that make the editors stop and ask, “Hold up, who did that one?”
As always, thank you for being one of the few people out there who respects the guide boxes on Indesign. I know the painstaking but crucial task of page standardization is in good hands with you.

Mia: I’ll forever be in awe at how you do it all. Prithvi, Stephen, and I would give you 10 assignments and a whole illustration and you’d finish it all on time and with a smile. Your contributions to the each issue went beyond just your work responsibilities though. You made us laugh, kept us fed, helped us brainstorm ideas and stayed for countless late nights.

Leila and Mia, you two have worked so hard to earn these positions, and we are looking forward to seeing the direction you take the paper in next year.

Ryan Chang and Sophia Kontos:

We already said this in a previous letter, but we love our Online Family so, so much. SJ, Sinclair, Laney and Fareen: you guys are all very dear to us, and though you joined us at different times, it feels like we’ve all been together the whole time. As much fun as it was to work together as a team of EICs, we cherish the tight-knit online squad even more. As we head off to college, we will always treasure the memories of Laney’s terrible dad jokes, Fareen’s weird obsession with Bing, and Sinclair’s inability to use Facebook. It’s no secret The Review Online had its best year yet, and we know that you guys, along with Megan and Ashley, will continue that upward trend next year. We love y’all 3000.

And, since Online DOES thrive on multimedia, the Editorial Board created this music video as a thank-you and farewell to you all. Although you’ve all seen this video (probably multiple times) by now, we’d like to immortalize it on the website the only way we know how. Shoutout to Stephen for spearheading the project, even though his Kermit impression pales in comparison to Eli’s.

Love,

The Senior Editors of The Review