I've sort of been planning this letter for three years.
God, this is embarrassing.
So, the truth comes out. I'm kind of a Street nerd. The second week of my freshman year I sat in the CAPS waiting room, about to be diagnosed with a litany of anxiety disorders and foisted off on the psychiatrist I continue to see today, when I picked up a copy of the DP. Stuffed inside was this ... thing. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but there was a letter to then-transfer student Ivanka Trump that was kind of funny, so I went to the "thing"'s first meeting.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Over the years I've spent more time working on 34th Street than I have in class, or on class work. I've sacrificed grades and relationships and trips to Smokes. I've eaten millions of slices of (free) pizza, spent hours talking shit on the roof of the DP offices and flirted with David Spade (kind of). I've laughed, and I've cried. And I've laughed. And I've cried.
I've cried.
And ostensibly, I've done it for you.
But, next semester, a new editor-in-chief will begin burdening unsuspecting little you (and you and you) with his or her own neuroses and theories and pearls of unreliable and unearned wisdom, and eventually (eventually being February) my star will fade. I've seen it happen before -- slowly but surely, editor by Street editor, those who preceded us are forgotten. The men who loomed large when I began (and they were all men as opposed to women, and certainly as opposed to boys) remain alive in 34th Street lore only in the annals of my mind. Slowly the remnants of them in the office are covered by newer and flashier mementos, until they are gone completely. Dinosaurs -- like me -- might bring up a name every once in a while (Do you remember Anthony Cotton? He was the funniest!), but nobody really gets it. They don't understand. They weren't there. They don't care.
And why should they?
I've even watched former Street editors return to the offices where the illustrious publication is produced. I've had to deal with them. They think they mean something to me, to us, to you! But they don't.
It's me, us, you, who mean something to them.
Here I am, three years later, and I feel tired and burnt out. I want to sit around on Sunday nights watching Grey's Anatomy. I need the freedom to despise grammar and punctuation and Quark. I don't want to hear that you think so-and-so deserved to be cultural elite. You know what? If I've learned one thing, I've learned this: You're all elite.
But today -- for the last time ever -- I'm the most elite of all. (Right?)
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow, I'll just be one of you. A member of the proletariat. A plebian. A candy-eating, glasses-wearing, materialist has-been.
So this is Christmas.
The end.
--Yona
