Dear Walden, Arielle, Alana, and Collin:
2022 was a big year for Street. I think I always knew it would be, even from the day we were elected and screamed “GLOSSY MAG!” to Walnut Street at 1 a.m.
We had big dreams. And most of them came true.
We bid farewell to decades of newsprint magazines and ushered in a new age of glossy paper, and we finally emerged from pandemic–era Street into reimagined normalcy. We returned to BYOs and IRL production nights, and with these transitions we learned the perils of spending too much time in a windowless office.
Now that my time here is coming to an end, I’m not sure how to sum it all up. Most of these letters are a snapshot of the moments in which I write them, a dispatch from a particular version of myself. This one is a collage of a year, and it’s still being pieced together.
But your time has just begun. You have a year worth of blank pages—416 of them, to be exact—to fill however you choose. Street will be yours, to lead as you wish.
You’ll spend months lamenting the hours you put into this place only to panic at the thought of what you’ll do when it’s no longer the center of your world. You’ll buy each other boba on the way to the office and walk each other home when you’re done for the night. You’ll celebrate the changes that have already been made and try out some new ones of your own.
And someday when you think back on your tenure at 4015 Walnut St., you’ll feel just like I do now—how so many editors–in–chief felt before me. You’ll be ready for a long nap and a three–week vacation, but you’ll also be incredibly proud.
All I ask is this: Take care of our little magazine. More importantly, take care of each other. This job isn’t easy, and it will challenge you in a different way each day. But you’ll be a bit better for each lesson you learn, and hopefully so will Street.
One last time,
SSSF,
Emily
