Editor's Note

Dear reader, At the end of each year, FM typically publishes a feature called “15 Most Interesting Seniors.” It’s always felt silly for the editors of a magazine to be the judges of who is “most interesting,” but it felt especially silly to do this in 2020, when a pandemic has spread us all across the world, far away from our campus and its definition of “interesting.” So this year, we decided to switch things up. We generated 15 seniors at random and profiled them — learning about their circumstances and exploring how the pandemic has impacted their lives. In the process, we wrote about seniors who are enrolled in classes and taking time off, who spent the semester on campus and abroad, who are interning and caring for their families. We hope that we’ve painted a portrait of the Class of 2021 as it is — scattered, tired, overwhelmed, and a little hopeful, too. We didn’t intend or expect that this feature would feel celebratory, as has often been the case in the past. In a year so defined by distance, disease, and death, that tone felt, well, at least little inappropriate. But even amid accounts of loss and hardship, our writers found so many things to celebrate — a pitcher on the varsity baseball team getting to play catch each afternoon with his dad, a pair of high school sweethearts taking their cat for walks, an aspiring surgeon caring for nearly 100 small fish. We hope you’ll take some time to get to know the seniors who took some time to let us into their worlds. This issue also inaugurates FM’s first “Illustrated Magazine.” It’s a tradition we hope continues, because wow are our illustrators talented. Marvel at their work as you read beautiful reflections on gaps and how we fill them from JZL, MVE, RLL, JEG, FYH, and SPM. And of course you won’t want to miss goodbye endpapers from the talented AAC and SSAY. What a year it’s been. When we took over as editors of this magazine, we imagined our biggest problems would be exhausted Wednesday mornings in John Boonstra’s HL90 or frustrated Thursday evenings when C’est Bon ran out of non-variety pack Angry Orchard Rosé. Needless to say, things went differently than expected. But seeing our editors and writers come together week after week to keep our magazine chugging along — that’s been a greater joy than we could have ever imagined, too. We can’t wait to see where FM goes under the leadership OGO and MNW. Thanks for faithfully reading — we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our increasingly unhinged closeout notes as much as we’ve enjoyed writing them. Yours, AWDA & NHP