Angry Adam: Goodbye to The Anchor

It’s difficult to believe that this is going to be my last issues of The Anchor ever. After two years here, I’ve become very accustomed to giving up my entire Monday and a resemblance to anything even remotely close to sleep. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to actually fill up my summer without having to make continual phone calls and needing to try to fit in interviews whenever anyone actually would apply.

When I initially received an email about joining The Anchor, it was nearing the end of summer and I found it on my Hope email about a month after it had been sent, the first time I’d checked my email that whole summer. A random girl that I had a class with said that they thought I was a good writer and they really wanted me on staff. I responded, and they fit me in for an interview the next morning, the day that they were sending acceptance letters in the mail. I interviewed at 9 a.m. in my pajamas sitting on my bed and about four hours later I got the email saying that I had gotten the job as a Sports Editor. A quick blurb at the end of the copy/paste email read “the other Sports Editor is a friend of mine and I think you guys will get along great.”

Fast forward to a week before school started that fall and I came in for Anchor training week. I recognized a few other faces from the class that I’d had with Nicole, the co editor in chief and the per son who recruited me, but I didn’t recognize the bearded face that I’d be working with the rest of the year in sports. That was the first time I’d met Duncan MacLean IV, a guy whose name sounded more pretentious than gold dipped caviar. We ended up get ting along really well, and I even got a shout out when he wrote his last ever Anchor article, so here’s a shout out back to him. Watching Duncan and Alek Molenaar throw markers at each other and continue other such shenanigans each week made me look forward to Monday nights. Add to that our newspaper fort building and lay ing in random places on the floor and Alex Swain doing whatever the heck he was up for doing that week, and you had a recipe for one of the best staffs that The Anchor will ever have.

At that time, I wouldn’t have guessed that I’d be pretty good friends with Nicole and Duncan before the year ended. I definitely had no idea that they’d convince me to have an incredibly short stint, literally just one episode, helping out with Hope Update. Or that through them, I’d be come friends with Julian Morrison, a cool guy who I eventually convinced to be our Production Manager for a semester, and who served a short lived service as my RA during the summer.

I wasn’t really as close to our other editor in chief Hope Han cock, but I definitely had a good amount of fun harassing her for not inviting anyone on staff to her wedding. I’m still a little of fended about that.

Nicole put together the amazing Anchor documentary videos, which are still viewable on YouTube if you so desire, and those were some of my best college moments. It was tough to see them go, but as I’d been coerced into applying for the co editor in chief position the next year, I knew that I’d have to work to find staffers just as great as they were. And honestly, I think I succeeded.

I learned shortly that my co editor would be Amber Carnahan, an arts editor that I knew next to nothing about. I wasn’t completely sure about how well it would go, but we got along really well, and she definitely did more than her share of the work in being a co editor in chief. So, to Amber, thanks for picking up the slack that I dropped quite often, and for taking care of the whole communication with any important business thing.

Who knew that when the bookstore took over our office during the summer, I’d be the one entrusted with Murray, our paperweight skull that was left by an alumnus, and that I’d have to keep him save during the time away? Or that I’d be in here for an hour or two in the morning at least once a week to help individually label envelopes and fold newspapers to mail out to our very few subscribers.

We only had a few return ing students who remained on staff from the previous year, with a majority of the staff be ing seniors who were graduating. Amber and I, along with Emily Johnson, Amanda Lowry, Hannah Pikaart, and Melissa Bazany were the only members who ended up making it back, before Becky Downing came back from being abroad the semester after. Thanks guys for coming back to the staff and for helping to make this second year amazing as well. Amanda and Melissa, or Georgia as I still call her, both do an amazing job at each of their respective positions, and I don’t really know if The Anchor could function without them. As for Emily, she was forced to leave The Anchor halfway through the semester, but still stops in every now and then to make everyone smile. I’ll always miss our bickering in the office.

As we rounded out our staff, we began to get some of the greatest personalities on board. Fononyamba Nunghe had one of the greatest interviews that I’ve ever had the experience of being a part of. Fonon, which is much easier to say than his full name, was in Holland still while I had gone back home for the end of the summer. Because we weren’t in a position to have a face to face interview, as I don’t have a car, Fonon and I decided to have our interview via Skype. However, what I had failed to take into ac count was that my family wifi is notorious for being incredibly slow. Our immediate picture was fuzzy, and the voices lagged a ton when we were trying to talk. So, I obviously thought it’d be easier if I turned video off and we used Skype just for the voice chat, taking a lot of the strain off of the internet.

However, what I had forgotten to take into account was that my Skype profile picture, which shows when you turn video chat off, was me making a ridiculously stupid face. About three minutes into the conversation, and after Fonon had repeated the pronunciation of his name four or five more times than it was actually polite for me to ask him to do, he burst out into laughter telling me that he couldn’t take me seriously and couldn’t continue the interview with that picture look ing at him. Luckily, we somehow finished the interview despite Fonon’s best efforts to laugh him self to death, and Fonon took over my old position as a sports editor. He’s a great guy, always laugh ing and smiling, always in a good mood and always ready to recommend to you a new show or song. If you ever get the chance to meet him, take that opportunity.

Other members of our staff, like the overly qualified Stephanie Arndt, I had to try to convince to join The Anchor. Stephanie worked with me at Phelps, and it took some convincing, but eventually, I interviewed her after we finished a shift at Phelps together, and immediately offered her the position of voices editor. She’s rocked that job, and has probably ended up writing the most articles of every person on staff this semester. If she keeps writing for that position next year, please students, write into voices, she needs you. Another of my friends, Nicole Mirabile, agreed to step in as an emergency copy editor for the first semester before she be gan student teaching, and helped to save our butts in that sticky situation.

Our other copy editors not named Nicole or Emily are now Anna Stafford and Hannah Pikaart. Both are incredibly talented and great individuals, and both always make production night interesting. You can never guess the next thing that’s going to come out of Anna’s mouth and it’s usually something ridiculous, or she’s making strange sighs and sounds normal people can’t produce. Hannah is usually watch ing and commenting on whatever she’s watching on Netflix or commenting on the new single (most likely Lorde), which can be hilarious.

Isabel, Alayna, Marty, Sarah and Annah, you guys were all great and loads of fun to have on staff and I hope you guys keep The Anchor going strong. And last, but not least, there’s Colin O’Connor, the guy who’s taking my job as male editor in chief next year. Colin is our world edi tor and the one who was unanimously voted “Kookiest in the Office.” Colin is quite possibly one of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met and has been a joy to work with this semester, even if all of his stories are continually the most depression stories in the paper. Colin, male co editors in chiefs have a proud tradition of slightly slacking off, providing only jokes and almost no sub stance and being the fun ones around the office. Don’t let down your people.

In all, my two years at The Anchor have been some of the most memorable and fun times of college. We’ve had great times and produced some of the greatest Ranchors Hope College will ever see. Having this office saved my butt when my computer broke and the manufacturer didn’t mail mine back for a month (never buy ASUS) and gave me a place to study on more than one occasion. It’s been my home away from home where I’ve secretly stored food and work clothes and it’s given me a weird social phobia about people watching me through windows. In a final note to Mark Lewison, the advisor of The Anchor, thanks for being around all this time and thanks for helping us make The Anchor great again!

To Nicole, Duncan didn’t do Press Passes every time, the other times it was me. And to everyone else, the name is a lie, I’m almost never angry.