It’s hard to believe that within your time at Northwood, you’ll pass by almost 2,200 different individuals. They may be people you pass by once and never see again. They may be people you end up sharing classes with year after year. They may be people you used to know, people you’ll come to know or people you’ll know forever.
Right now, you’re reading one of the 2,200 voices on campus. Hi. All things even, we have a 0.04% chance of knowing each other, and yet you found me within the ink of this wood pulp paper.
This is the one time you’ll see my own voice on these pages, so I’m glad to reach you. But from now on, as the Editor-in-Chief, my goal is not to make myself or my team the star of our publication, but to ensure that the almost 2,200 individuals on campus get represented in these pages as best as possible. I hope to inform you, to help you, to educate you and to make you laugh through our publication, but most importantly to make you feel seen.
With that being said, there’s a tradition here on The Howler where the new Editor-in-Chief gives some piece of advice in their introduction. They’ve always followed the lines of “make the most of your high school experience,” or “just go for it.” But I’m guessing you’ve heard it all before.
So, here is a piece of advice that I think people don’t hear often, but need to hear: I wish that for as many times people say to “just go for it” or “just do it,” people would also say that it’s equally important to just relax. You’ll start to see that the daily happenings at Northwood are the ones that make up the fabric of your memories here.
More than a grade, more than an award, I’ve found contentment on campus in the mundane. I love bask-ing out on the grass during break. I love reading through the red pen markings on my English essays. In retrospect, I even love the moments I most despised—fast-paced labs, Socratic seminars, interviews—because the euphoria of getting it done has always been sweet enough to make up for the stress.
I hope you will all grow to appreciate the mundane here at Northwood—learn to relax even in times of stress and learn to be proud of yourself even in the moments that will break you. When you can’t have high highs, I’ve always found that feeling happiness in the everyday will make you the most content.
You are one of 2,200 people here. I’m another. And from just one fellow person on campus to another, I hope that you will be happy this year. I hope that even if you have your hard moments, you can look back and say “I was content.”
