Looking back on our past four years at OHS, the memories blend into one, and we are left trying to throw together a cohesive story with the remnants of our high school careers.
Between all of the all-nighters, all of the cramming for tests, all of the rushing around after the 2:26 bell (or lack thereof)…The Current stands out as one of our definitive high school experiences.
To those of you who never wrote for The Current and were just devoted fans, occasional readers or innocent bystanders, it may be difficult to discern how one club or activity could mean so much. To our athletes: if you understand what it is to be on a team, you will understand what it means to be at the reins of The Current—to work together to create something special, united in a common cause. Of course, our work does not involve day-to-day strenuous labor, but instead the will to serve, to deliver something to our student body that is otherwise absent.
And we hope that we have delivered this service to you over the past four years. We hope that we have kept you informed; be it on the largest international issues, or on the hidden pieces of knowledge lying right under our noses at OHS. And to our writers: we hope that we have given you the opportunity to inform us about the issues that you care about, to understand what it takes to be a journalist and to contribute to our greater cause.
At the end of the day, it does not come down to us, the Editors-in-Chief, but to our “team” at The Current. And this does not only include our section editors. This includes our staff writers, our photographers, our administrators, other members of the OHS staff, and, perhaps most of all, our advisor Ms. Bayer. For the many students who only see the finished product, it is hard to understand that it is not the work of the few, but of dozens of students and employees that goes into every issue of The Current. It starts with our staff meetings, but quickly grows into hours spent in the library laying out the paper with our section editors, whose work and devotion deserve continued appreciation.
We both began as staff writers on the newspaper, neither one of us imagining at the time that we would one day be running this paper together. At the time, we were just there to write; to write about the world news that caught our attention, write about our opinions on certain issues, to make our voices heard. We were there to write about something that mattered, something that students cared about…and something that we cared about. The fact that we’ve been able to not only write, but also to help shape other articles and pieces about subjects that we were interested in, subjects that were sometimes hard to swallow, subjects that flowed from the pen to paper, well that’s what we’ll remember, writing something for people to read, to learn, and to understand.
The core of The Current has remained relatively consistent over the past two years, and the community engendered among us is much more reminiscent of a family than of an editorial staff. Despite the late nights huddled over the library computers and perennial frustration that comes with fixing the subtle errors on the pages during layout, all in all, the thread of a family holds true. We look forward to what others would see as a chore, and that’s thanks to the editors who make our jobs enjoyable. Aside from the euphoria and relief that comes with completing each issue, the real value of what we do comes in the form of the laughs we share at layout, and the memories made with our newspaper family. It sounds cliché, and it probably is, but nothing describes our editorial staff more appropriately.
And so, while the two of us have much to look forward to in the fall, writing our farewell to readers of The Current is a bittersweet moment. Certainly, we are proud of the work we have done, and excited to see how The Current grows and evolves in the coming years, but we are sad to say goodbye to our writers, our editors, and all of the other members of our team at The Current.
To our readers, writers, and supporters, thank you for remaining devoted to The Current over the past four years. We will miss you and miss OHS, and hope that you continue to enjoy the service that our team…that our family works to provide.
