Gifts are weird. For many, it’s the holiday season, and giving and receiving gifts can be complicated. When I took over The Daily Gamecock editor-in-chief position in October, it didn’t feel like a gift; it felt like a burden. But in retrospect, taking the job was the best decision I made this semester, and I have so many people to thank for that.
To the professional team of Student Media, thank you for your support, trust and counsel when I needed it most, this semester and all those previously. My confidence in this job has stemmed largely from you.
To everyone on senior staff, to whom I can never say this enough: Thank you. You are the reason that I can call my brief term as your editor successful. You are the delightful, infectiously quirky people that I'll miss spending two nights a week with at production, plus all the scattered hours we cross paths in the newsroom. You are the content that makes this newspaper something I'm proud to be a part of.
Thank you for letting me lead you, for trusting me and for calling me a friend. There are only a few places in my life that offer a real sense of belonging, and the newsroom is one of them.
Briefly, to my immediate predecessor, thank you for this gift, as difficult as it was for both of us.
This semester did not go the way I planned, but none of them do. There are people I would never have met or become close to, experiences I would never have had without this weird gift of a job. So thank you again — to all of you, for everything.