The summer after my first year at Case Western Reserve University, I applied to The Observer on a whim, hastily updating my resume and writing a cover letter at 2 a.m. in the hopes of being accepted as a copy editor. Since attending my first Student Activities Fair in August 2021, I had known about The Observer and often grabbed an issue off of the stand in Clark Hall after my Elementary Latin classes, but I had chosen not to apply or write; those who knew me in high school can attest that I had given my soul to the Reserve Record, the school newspaper, and I had no intention of spending my college years editing articles and chasing writers until the wee hours of the night. Nevertheless, a regrettably uneventful first year at CWRU and an impulse that I will never fully understand pushed me to apply that summer. I was accepted as a copy editor and began editing on the fourth issue of my second year. What followed were three years that have had an indelible effect on my life.

My first year on The Observer was the year of Executive Editor Shreyas Banerjee, one of the most industrious and dedicated people I have ever met, and Director of Print Sara Khorshidi, a boss who terrified me and yet could make me cry with laughter every week. (Funny coincidence: I wrote in the first sentence of this article that “I applied to The Observer on a whim,” and only later did I check and see that the first line of Sara’s farewell article reads, “I joined The Observer on a whim”—great minds think alike, right?) Among the copy editors laboring with me in the trenches of the University Media Board (UMB) Office was Shivangi Nanda, a student whose love of journalism and The Observer in particular knows no bounds—and who will play a big part in this story later.

We copy editors were a tenacious bunch, always eager to leave production night early but perpetually unable to because the section editors were frequently writing and/or editing their articles late. One time Sara took us out into the hallway like a teacher who had had enough and chastised us for the negative way in which we spoke about the section editors—in hindsight, she was right to do that. Anyway, I did my work like a diligent little copy editor, learning when to use numerals when reporting scores in sports articles, when to capitalize someone’s title and all the other minutiae of AP Style that go unnoticed by anyone outside of the Print Team. 

That year, I began my five-part series reviewing “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” tracks, which was probably a bane to the two life editors who have had to edit those ridiculously long articles (sorry); I remember begging Sara to final edit those articles so that Shreyas would not rip them asunder. Somehow Sara let me include the phrase “casual pickle enjoyers” in a caption for an article about the Cleveland Pickle Fest. Oh, and I wrote a ridiculous article reviewing a selection of chairs proposed for the new residence halls; most of the Editorial Board wanted to title it “Butts for science,” but Sara and I refused to let that appear in print, opting for the conservative “New chair alert.” I had a difficult time making friends that year. The closest was Shivangi, with whom I walked back to Southside every Wednesday after production night, but our conversations consisted of talking about Observer work and speculating about who the next executive editor would be. The 2022–23 school year ended; Shivangi was elected executive editor, and she picked me to be her director of print, a position that I have held for the last two years.

While I was out of the UMB Office around 10 or 11 p.m. as a copy editor, finishing before 2 a.m. as director of print in fall 2023 was early. Who knew that final editing half the articles and finalizing all the Adobe InDesign pages would take so long? It did not help that something always—always without fail—went wrong. Still, I had Director of Design Auden Koetters to rely upon, an academic weapon if I have ever met one and the best InDesign user I have ever known. It was a rocky start, however, as her first encounter with me involved my adamant refusal to reformat one of my “Mario Kart” articles when I was a copy editor and she a layout designer. For 27 issues that year, she, Shivangi and I (the “3 a.m. Trio”) worked on the paper and slowly grew to like each other.

That year was rough on the print side. There were several instances when we sent off an issue to print around 3 a.m., only for me to check the PDFs in my 10 a.m. class on Thursday to find some major error, which then entailed emailing our contact at the printer to halt printing so that someone could run to the UMB Office and fix the problem. There were other times when an error was not caught, and my day would be ruined when I found the error in print or was told about it by someone else. Near the end of that year, the “3 a.m. Trio” pulled an all-nighter in the UMB Office, finishing the issue around 8 a.m. because of complications with a timeline displaying events regarding the Israel-Hamas war on campus. (There were still errors on that timeline when it arrived in print.) Shivangi and Auden still get on my case for leaving at 7 a.m. even though there was nothing for me to do while Auden was editing on the sole open computer. I will never forget seeing the sun rise as I left the UMB Office—I was reevaluating the life choices that had led me to that point, but somehow I stuck around on The Observer. What else was I going to do with my Wednesday nights (and Thursday mornings, apparently)?

Entering this year, my last year as director of print and at CWRU, I still did not feel like I truly “belonged” on The Observer. Most of that was honestly my fault, as I am very slow and hesitant to socialize. Once when asked if I considered Shivangi and Auden my friends, I remarked that they were “colleagues,” a comment that they still bring up and I can never live down. I made a greater effort to get to know them, and it was the best decision that I have made in my time working on this paper.

I have spent so much time working with section editors, copy editors, layout designers, graphic designers and other various staff members, and their talent and dedication has been a continual source of inspiration to me. It has been one of my most meaningful college experiences to watch them improve their skills and help them whenever I could. Particular praise is due to Sports Editor Darcy Chew and News Editor Zachary Treseler, who have devoted so much of their time to covering the most important news on campus and ensuring that we get all the facts right. Life Editor Kate Gordon and Opinion Editor Hannah Johnson manage our two most popular sections in terms of writers, sometimes having to edit five or more articles a week while also writing a piece of their own; the paper would be so devoid of content without their weekly contributions. 

Without Auden’s exceptional InDesign skills, every production night would have finished at 8 a.m. Nobody can match her talent on that software, and I have been the luckiest director of print to have her at my side. I owe endless gratitude to Shivangi, the beating heart of The Observer for the last two years. She has taken on far more than her fair share of work, not only final editing articles and working with InDesign as I have done, but also defending us against the administration, dealing with the budget, planning bonding events and so, so much more. She deserves endless credit for keeping the paper and all its staff on track every single week, making an environment where everyone feels welcome and appreciated.

All in all, after 54 issues, I have spent around 500 hours in the UMB Office with Shivangi and Auden, and in that time they have grown into two of my best friends. Conversations about friends, family, classes, careers, religions, love and much more have occurred in those late hours, and I would not trade those for anything—not even more sleep. I have leaned on them regarding problems in my personal life, and they have been a wonderful source of support and advice. I could not have asked for two better colleagues—I mean friends, friends!

I know that when I reflect on my years on The Observer in the near or distant future, I will not remember deleting this or that superfluous comma or spellchecking every name that I came across—though that was essential work, occupying almost every Wednesday for the last three years of my life. Rather, I will remember picking up an issue fresh off the printer every Friday afternoon, the culmination of at least 100 hours of combined work and a permanent record of what we, the CWRU community, thought, felt, experienced and accomplished. I will remember the staff bonding events at The Big Bounce America, Tabletop Board Game Cafe and Shivangi’s apartment, where I learned so much about all the amazing people on the Editorial Board who are too numerous to completely name and praise. Most of all, I will remember the late nights spent in conversation with close friends, musing about the purpose of our lives as the bright light of InDesign illuminated our faces until I gave the call that the last page was finalized and we all promptly packed up to go home—all in order to repeat the process the next week with fresh minds, new topics in our lives to discuss and a collective passion to create a product to inform you, dear reader, about the latest events affecting our unique, bustling and infinitely complex campus.