Alek’s first and last editor’s corner

Well, here we are, coming down to the wire. I just had my final production night on Monday, and now you can see my last words to The Anchor staff. It’s a weird mix of feelings; sadness because I won’t work with this group of people again, happiness because I’ll have Monday nights to myself, but really, it’s the feeling of “the last time” that hits me.

The Anchor gave me an opportunity that I narrowly missed my senior year of high school. I had taken “Journalism I,” which is essentially the basics of being on a newspaper team with a final project of printing your own full page of articles. “Journalism II” was actually working on “The Vision,” which was my high school newspaper. I never got to work on “The Vision” because of scheduling with other classes my senior year.

Being a non-communication major nor English major did create a little hesitation inside me going into The Anchor, but I knew it would relieve the chip on my shoulder from missing it in high school. If there is advice I can give to all the majors out there, it’s get involved with writing.

Businesses wherever you go are looking for people who can write well. Magazines and newspapers across the country say that “writing is becoming a lost art.” I disagree. It is one of the most important business skills a person can have leaving college. So yes, I’d like you to write for The Anchor, but if it’s writing a novel, a writing class, editing other people’s work, just something that gives you more experience with all twenty six of those things we call letters, you’re already ahead of the game. My main takeaway from The Anchor was how improved my writing has become over the last two years as an editor.

I started writing in my late freshman and the better part of my sophomore years as a guest writer for The Anchor. I then applied and was a Campus Co-Editor my junior year and now write to you as the Campus Editor my senior year. I’ve learned a lot about how the newspaper world works. There are days where everything runs smoothly, and there are days where you’re up until 3 a.m. on a Monday. I’ve enjoyed getting to know how to use InDesign CS 5.5 and all its little quirks and painstakingly specific processes. Running around the office coked up on coffee usually leads me to falling to the floor laughing with the pain of school and homework stacking up and the fact that college is ending.

I will miss the staff a lot as we all head our separate ways. Our Editors-in-Chief did a fantastic job of putting The Anchor right side up again, especially after a rocky 2014-15 school year. If you want to know pieces of what The Anchor was like for me, I encourage you to watch our small documentary series on YouTube. The memories from the laughs, frustration and great success from The Anchor will stick with me for a very long time.

There are too many strange emotions to consider, but it’s scariest to know that I may not see many of these people I’ve come to know again, or at least for a long time.

The trouble with college is that it doesn’t do much to prepare you for that in between phase of leaving and starting life at a place other than Hope. But that is a bridge I will cross when I get there. I still have a week and a half of Hope College left in me. It’s a time for hard work, fun and reflecting on the times and people I’ve met here. From the runners to The Anchor staff to kinesiology students, the experiences both in and out of the classroom have been invaluable.

It has been quite the time trying to run (without breaking) for Hope, writing for The Anchor and wanting to improve myself as a kinesiology major and a teaching assistant. College has been a wild ride, and now that it’s just about over, the questions of where do I go from here are constantly brought up.

As always, stay classy Hope College.

Signed,

Alek Molenaar, THE Campus News Editor

P.S.

1. Anderson Twerkman.

2. I never figured out the Coach Neil conspiracy.

3. Thanks, The Anchor