A roller coaster.
That’s how I’d the answer the question.
What question you wonder.
The question,
How was your year as
Feature Editor of The TORCH?
For those out there not counting, this is issue number 19 of The TORCH. Consequently, it’s also the last issue that will bear the name “Aion E. Hoque” along with the title “Feature Editor” (for now anyhow).
It’s been a long journey; indeed it’s been a tired and arduous journey. But it’s been worth it. I can’t help but stand back in amazement of everything that’s happened this year at the paper.
To some people, I wonder if it’s only ‘a newspaper’ to them. Something that comes out weekly, with writers they don’t know, and a process they don’t quite understand. The truth is, we’re not people you don’t know. We’re students like everyone else, and this isn’t only a paper; not to the countless editors, assistants and staff.
Every week, day in – and day out, we bear our thoughts, our livelihoods, and our very souls. And it’s all for one thing; the written word.
Understandably, some people may view it as a joke, or a ruse, or even just something we do to pass the time. But it’s more than that. It’s more than you can ever realize. In fact, it’s more than I can ever realize as well.
The time and energy poured into every paper is something of unbelievable magnitude. Like some metaphysical faucet of pure energy, constantly streaming its gallant youth and passion.
We’re young. All of us. But we’re experienced, experienced because we’ve put out a paper almost every week of this school year. Holidays, birthdays, vacations, we’re here all the time. We don’t measure time by minutes, hours or seconds. We measure time from issue to issue, precariously balancing The TORCH and our lives. Until one day we realize that the two have somehow interchanged, and that The TORCH has become life.
Being part of something like The TORCH, if only for a moment, is what life’s all about. Through the headaches, and the smiles, the tears and the frowns, you learn something you can only learn with hard work. You learn one simple lesson; that life is full of opportunity.
No one can ever take away from me what I’ve done here this year. You may have thought of some of my work as clever or funny, and some maybe even asinine. But the fact remains, they’re my abilities, and I’ve shared them.
I’m leaving my name behind in the annals of TORCH history with the countless other feature editors who’ve come before me. Names I can’t even delve into because I myself don’t know all of them. Just thinking that we’ve been running this paper for almost a century astounds me; because I know I’m part of something that truly is infinitely larger than I am.
So I thank everyone involved in letting me do what I do best; babble, think and write. I thank everyone who’s endured my madness and lunacy. I thank the people who stood by me, and even those who faltered away when they knew what I was doing was wrong. I thank my fellow editors, who I see everyday, and the readers, for whom everything I do is for.
Somewhere, there’s someone who’s reading this right now thinking, “wow, a newspaper sounds great,” but it’s just not the paper. It’s all of the people behind it that put everything on the line, that expect only one thing from you; everything.