If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a Maroon-News staffer, a friend of mine or extremely bored. Thus, in keeping with the perennial command of professors to “know your audience,” I’ll include something for everyone.

To The M-N: I got involved with this damn newspaper before I even knew what Playfair was, and I’ve been vowing to take it over and make it a respectable periodical since before I graduated high school. Well, I took it over, at least. I like to think that I’ve been seeing more and more quality, more and more integrity and more and more people reading the paper over these four years, but that might just be a trick of the light.

Whatever progress has been made has been the work of all of us together. In particular, I want to thank my co-editor and friend, Olivia Offner, for her poise, her initiative in all things business, her refusal to tolerate my nonsense, the chocolate eggs and walking up the hill with me in August of ’05.

Also, to Paul and Andrew: thank you both for seeing that this paper is far from perfect and for believing that you can do it better than we did. I would not want to hand The M-N off to people who would let it stagnate for a year. Go get ’em, you crazy kids.

To my friends: I’m glad that you picked up the paper and flattered that you’d read my jabberwocky. Unfortunately, I have no string of in-jokes with which to reward you, except perhaps to issue a blanket apology for my lack of Facebook activity. Once the new features went up, nothing seemed to work as well as it used to, and I just got too impatient to deal with it anymore. If you are a Writing Center friend, you may have noticed by now the lack of Oxford commas. Don’t blame me. Blame the Associated Press.

To the extremely bored: I can only recommend Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot. The latter will entertain you for a shorter period of time, but, if read aloud, may inspire you to find the entertainment in the smallest of things.

The two former have coached me through the storm and stress of my final semester at Colgate (not to mention a nasty flu or two) — with the help, that is, of an especially beloved acquaintance of mine whom I met in my FSEM.

While we’re on the subject, one last line, to Stanley: Thank you for putting up with the long newspaper nights. It was easier knowing I’d be coming back to you.