WSN played such a critical role throughout my time at NYU. I think there’s something special to be said about a space full of 18 to 21-year-olds, hellbent on creating something beautiful and productive while most of their peers try their hands at smaller feats than the incredible responsibility surrounding journalism and the act of putting out a newspaper every week. Of course, you can’t put that many young people in charge of something and not have drama, disaster and incredible stress at times — take the coup d’état that happened our freshman year, or the sweet, drunk excitement at the staff parties after high tensions throughout a semester. We took it all at face value, moving forward in the legacy of the paper, creating, growing, making some of our best friends and creating the community that we all so desperately seek in college. We cried in the conference room, we walked home from the office when the sun was rising, fought silently over who DJ’d, bounced around impossible ideas until they became realities. I broke someone’s glasses in our annual water gun assassin game to be crowned the winner of The Grand Challenge, my prize a loaf of bread from Westside. We rose in the ranks until the incoming staff members looked towards us, up at us, laughing and dancing, knowing that they, too, could be part of the fun, of making something for themselves at WSN. It was all work and all play at the same time. I’ll always be grateful to have been part of it, to have met some of my favorite people through it, to still be living with two of them and connected with so many others. I’m not going into journalism or graphic design, nor did I ever plan to, but my hours spent laboring through nights in the office were some of the most important moments for me in the past four years. Congrats to all of the seniors graduating with us — I hope you can take all of your passion and energy and continue to use it to make a positive change in the world. And my deepest thank you to Rachel, my other newspaper half, for letting me talk your ear off for the last four years (and many more to come).

Email Laura Shkouratoff at [email protected]. Read more from Washington Square News’ “While You Were Here 2020.”