NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN

Dear Readers,

Congratulations, you’ve made it to the back of the magazine! I really hope you enjoyed it. These little messages from Print Managing Editors usually go at the front, you know, as a little primer, but things change — and instead you’re getting a sort of post-game, behind-the-scenes look into the making of all of those stories you read. Variety is the spice of both life and magazine formatting.

A former PME once wrote that student journalism is a labor of love, and I believe that now more than ever. This magazine came to be not only over the course of our third quarter online, but also Winter Quarter online. Winters are already a tough time, with frigid Evanston temperatures and the occasional 28 inches of snow, but this amazing staff of editors, designers, writers and fact-checkers not only survived but thrived, producing something really special in the process.

We had stories that found the light, even amidst the winter blues. You read about students’ fond Burger King memories and the way they’re decorating the dorm rooms they occupy most of the time; adventures with what might be the grossest alcoholic beverage known to man; and poking fun at the potential beer pong ban (please don’t do it). You learned how students have found communities, albeit virtual, through student clubs and their own small businesses.

We faced the realities of this quarter, too: the struggles of isolation and taking calculated risks in hopes of maintaining some of the “college experience,” the institutional hurdles of ethnic studies departments and the mysterious Board of Trustees. We mourned the loss of the programs that were meant to make or break our college careers. The resilience of the Northwestern community amazes me all the time, and there are still plenty of changes left to be made.

And now we’re here, at the end of the mag, and I just want to take the time to say thank you. Thank you for reading our magazine even though we’re not pestering you at the Rock to take a copy or tabling at Norris. Thank you to our sources for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. Thank you to this amazing Winter 2021 staff for your time, effort and patience with me and my goofy email sign-offs. I am so unbelievably proud of the work we’ve done this quarter, and I can’t wait to see what NBN does next. I suggest you also keep an eye out, dear readers. The best is yet to come.

ELISE HANNUM