There are people who refuse to say “Good-bye.” To them, the words mean they will never see you again. Instead, they say, “see you later” or “have a nice vacation.” As the semester ends, six of us on The Northerner staff prepare to graduate. It’s an odd feeling. (Or maybe it’s the nasty cold that has taken over most of campus this week.) Either way, this is a bittersweet time. We look forward to the future with anticipation, while knowing we’ll leave behind a group of people to whom we’ve grown so close. None of us will graduate in the standard four-year time frame. Some of us came back to school after starting “real life,” while others didn’t know what to do with ourselves after high school. Some of us are married, some are not. Four of us transferred to NKU from other colleges (some more than others). We’ve bounced around different majors. And contrary to popular belief, we are not all liberal Democrats. But one thing we all found in common was NKU and The Northerner. Here, we’ve been able to set aside our differences and use our experiences to create a newspaper of which we are damn proud. This semester, we focused on change. We thought, “bigger!,” “broader!”, “depth!”, “action!” and “white space!” We also focused on learning – learning from each other and from those around us. We learned things not taught in the classroom. We had to create new rules and standards for future editors, based upon lessons taught by our unanticipated problems. We learned that, as journalists, we must be more diligent and skeptical, and we must be willing to take more risks. We learned that being editor of a newspaper, on any level, is not an easy task and regardless of how hard you work, there will be those who will hate it – or at least be dissatisfied. But, if students are talking about us – good or bad – that means they’re reading our paper. Another valuable lesson: The “dead” in deadline is how your body feels upon the completion of another paper. But along with that, there is a sense of great pride. A lot of blood, sweat, tears and frustration goes into a paper. It’s not just one person who makes a paper, but a team. This team has grown by leaps and bounds this semester. Most of us didn’t know each other in August, but now it seems we’ve been working together for years. We are proud of The Northerner and confident that it will only get better with time and with the efforts of the Spring 2004 staff. By Dec. 20, we will have sold back our final textbooks, turned in the keys to our office and drank our last late-night “wake me up!” caffeinated drink in room 209. And as we walk down the isle to the sound of our names, we will feel satisfied with all that we have accomplished and all that we have to look forward to in the future. We wish everyone at NKU a safe and peaceful winter break and, “Good Luck!” to the 2004 Northerner staff, not “Good-bye.”

Lori Cox Bryan Ashcraft Brittany Contois Elias Hajjar Bree Culnan Travis Gettys