Hello readers,
It’s been a long road with many ups and downs, but we’ve arrived at the final issue of The Iron Warrior this term. I’d like to thank all my staff for all their hard work writing articles and copy editing. They’ve been an invaluable help to me this term, and without them, there would not be a newspaper.
I’d like to thank Jacob Terry and Farzi Yusufali for all their help this term, especially early. They helped me to iron out the kinks in our publishing schedule this term, and Jacob was the one who suggested printing the election issue. Farzi has been invaluable in helping me to catch mistakes in the issues.
I’d also like to thank Nancy Hui, Nina Feng, and Vince Magas as well as all my other copy editors for all the work they did catching grammar and spelling errors and making sure that articles were printed as error free as possible.
Thank you to the many who contributed to the paper this term. Your words and thoughts are the heart of the paper, and I hope those thoughts have informed many, and made them think.
I would like to thank both Mary and the EngSoc execs this term for basically managing the paper’s finances. Mary has been an invaluable help by delivering invoices to advertisers and informing me about important things like signing cheques and alerting me that Plant Ops wanted to put up the boards in the room. I know the EngSoc execs were very busy, and my only regret is that the one time they all handed in their reports on time was a week that wasn’t a publishing weekend. Well, that and also that I couldn’t attend any EngSoc meetings due to scheduling conflicts with a class.
I also have some awards to mention. Every term, we give out two awards. The Iron Pen Award goes to the person who wrote the most number of words in the paper in the term. The Editor’s Award goes to those people who have helped me the most this term.
The Iron Pen Award this term goes to newcomer Alex Toth! Nancy Hui was in the lead for most of the term, but despite an impressive 2000 words coming from Nancy this issue, Alex delivered a 3055 word monster to me this issue, which just barely placed him over Nancy in word count. Congrats to Alex!
The Editor’s Award this year goes to Jessica Keung! She’s been very helpful this term, writing several articles and starting a new humour column called How to Talk to… which will hopefully be a worthy successor to the vaunted TopZ (with a Z). She has also been my representative at said EngSoc meetings which I couldn’t attend, has done virtually every edition of the Iron Inquisition this term, and has been here for the majority of production weekends. Thanks for being such a big help and for doing basically anything I needed you to.
I would also like to announce the new EIC for the Summer 2014 term: Nina Feng! Nina has been with the paper since 1A, and was one of the most prolific contributors to the paper this term. She also has layout experience and knows how the paper will run. I’m sure you will do a great job in Summer 2014 Nina, and if you need help, don’t hesitate to ask me or any of the other previous EICs and others.
I also want to give a shout-out to Spenser Good, the incoming EIC for next term. Circumstances allowed him to turn up for several meetings this term and to write several articles, even though he’s offstream this term. I’m sure he’ll do an amazing job and I look forward to see what he will accomplish next term.
I will personally remember these last three months as some of the best months of my life. This was the first time I took on such a large responsibility, and I can only hope that I shouldered it admirably. One thing I know I could have improved on during the term was communication with EngSoc. I know scheduling conflicts kept me from being able to go to meetings, but I could have found other ways to keep in touch with them. Their input and advice could have made this term much easier, and Hopefully this will not be the end, but a beginning as I pursue bigger and better things next term, and I hope to stay involved in the engineering community.
All that said, these last several days have been rather trying to me. My godmother passed away early last week, and naturally I needed to attend the funeral. This meant I would be home from Thursday night to Friday morning. While I do not regret this decision, it did put me behind, both in schoolwork and on the paper. Again though, no regrets here. While it’s important to learn from every experience in your life, it’s more important to know what you learned in those experiences. I had lost my grandfather and my godmother, both of whom I was very close to, within the span of months. But I do not wish they did not pass away. I miss them, but they both lived very full lives, and I am happy for the time I was able to spend with them.
Thank you for being here throughout the term reading my ramblings about recent events and about life and challenges. I hope it didn’t bore too much. Thank you readers for continuing to pick up and read The Iron Warrior. It means a lot to us and after all, we are proving a service to you, and we are thankful you are appreciating it.
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