‘Try harder next week’

I hope that you will excuse me for writing in the first person. This is the last article I will ever write as Editor of this publication and, as such, it is quite a significant moment for me.

When I first came to Imperial in 2007 to study Physics, I would not have believed it possible that one could invest so much time, effort, and emotion into any one project. I started right at the bottom of the Felix hierarchy, writing articles for the Politics section (in fact, I think I may have started even lower than this; my first appearance in Felix was in a photograph of a cross-dressing party from halls). The newspaper quickly became a home for me, a place where I met my closest friends and found refuge from my sometimes-stifling studies.

My writing was incredibly poor, and my editing probably worse. I made a shocking number of mistakes and missteps; I am happy to say that this continues, though, I hope, at a marginally reduced frequency. I remember trying to resign my position as Politics Editor after a particularly awful week – three separate letters of complaint about three separate problems in my section – but the Deputy Editor at the time understood that Felix is built upon inclusiveness, opportunity, and humility; he laughed off my resignation and told me to try harder next week.

From these ignominious beginnings, I worked my way up the ladder, learning different skills in different sections, until, in my 4th year, the student body gave me the opportunity to take the helm. It is not a responsibility that I have always felt comfortable holding and I have not always fulfilled my duties as well as I should have. Where I have made mistakes I have done my best to correct them and I have always endeavoured to, in the words that stay with me more than three years on, ‘try harder next week’.

However, though the work has been hard and the hours long, it has always been a privilege to edit this paper with the many students who volunteer their time in the Felix office each week. It has been deeply fulfilling to see my ideas and aims become reality, and it has been a joy to see students and staff pick up the paper each week. There is nothing quite like it. The depths I sink to when I make an error are nothing to the dizzyingly-high peaks when someone dashes over to grab a copy as soon as I have laid it down.

I have worked on this paper for almost four years – despite, paradoxically, having only completed three years of my degree – and it is time for me, and my generation of editors, to let a new generation shape Felix, and make of it what they will. I would only ask them to always remain true to its ethos: to always ask people to ‘try harder next week’ instead of chastising them; to always make every effort to encourage students to get involved; to always be humble enough to admit their mistakes; and to always give Felix their all, and then some. For me, it is goodbye. Thank you all for your support.