{"id":4485,"date":"2022-05-04T22:21:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T22:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-the-words\/?page_id=4485"},"modified":"2024-07-30T19:57:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:57:27","slug":"kiras-parting-words","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/the-words-april-2022-2\/kiras-parting-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Kira’s Parting Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kira Schukar ’22<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Kira<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dear <\/span>Words <\/span><\/i>Readers,<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every May, <\/span>The Words\u2019 <\/span><\/i>Senior Editors share their parting words with the community. But if I\u2019m being honest, even though I\u2019ve known about this tradition for the last two years, I\u2019ve been at a loss for words for the entire month of April when I was supposed to be writing to you.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, as I procrastinated this letter, I ventured into <\/span>The Words <\/span><\/i>archives. I was surprised to find that the Senior Editors\u2019 parting words started so recently\u2014the oldest record I could find was <\/span>Zeena Fuleihan\u2019s letter in 2018<\/span><\/a>. In the final issues before Zeena\u2019s, editors had written more general senior send offs, but from what I can tell, Zeena was the first to write a dedicated letter to readers. I wasn\u2019t surprised to find that Zeena\u2019s words resonated with my own experience as an editor. From what I can tell, Senior Newsletter Editors for the last four years have given a resounding thanks to the English Department, the community, and their professors here at Macalester. \u201cAs I look back on the past four years,\u201d Zeena wrote, \u201cI find myself increasingly grateful for the community and opportunities I found in the English Department.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard for me to put myself into the moment that I declared my English major in 2019, the fall of my sophomore year. I sat down in Professor Kaston Tange\u2019s office, and she enthusiastically toured me around the department. I met Jan Beebe for the first time. I was handed a blue t-shirt with a picture of Mary Shelley on the front. I held my hardcover notebook embossed with \u201cMacalester English Major\u2019s Journal.\u201d I felt so nervous on this first tour\u2014excited, too\u2014and a little overwhelmed. Even though I\u2019d taken two English classes already and was already starting to fulfill my period requirements, I hadn\u2019t gotten the chance to make tea in the lounge or stop by for Coffee House on Wednesday nights. The English community felt so vibrant, and I wasn\u2019t sure where I fit into it yet.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, more than two years later, the department is my second home. I find myself staying long after I\u2019ve clocked out of my work shift, sipping tea in the lounge or chatting with other student workers. I watch the rain or\u2014let\u2019s be honest\u2014snow pattering against the Old Main window. I\u2019ve written papers here, read novels, made friends, eaten dinners, and drank countless cups of coffee. Some of my closest friends and colleagues are here. When I have nowhere else to go on campus\u2014between classes or before big events\u2014I come to the second floor of Old Main.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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The department has given me so much over the last four years\u2014friends, mentors, support for my research, knowledge, and a lifelong love of literature. And I can only hope that, now and in the future, I can give back to the department. As I wrote this letter, I also found myself combing through the articles I\u2019ve written over the last two years. I can remember where I was when I wrote each one. Some were here, in the office; some from my desk at home during our year of remote learning. But all of them ended up in the department, both on the website and in the hard copies of <\/span>The Words<\/span><\/i> in the lounge.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think of these old copies like an archive. One of my favorite pastimes when I need a break during my shift is to sift through old issues of <\/span>The Words<\/span><\/i> (once called <\/span>The Waverly<\/span><\/i>) to look for alumni whose names I recognize, or introductions from when my professors joined the department. But I\u2019ve made some surprising discoveries, too. Did you know that <\/span>The Waverly<\/span><\/i> published famous authors\u2019 birthdays every month? In the October \u201809 issue, editors Jens and Meghan told readers, \u201cWe need your help. Please tell us what kind of food to have at Department gatherings. We don\u2019t know what kind of food writers eat anymore.\u201d Another article in the December \u201809 issue is titled \u201cThe Six Books I Started to Read and Want to Finish But Don\u2019t Have Time Because I\u2019m an English Major.\u201d The old articles are fun and familiar\u2014they remind me that, for more than a decade, English majors have been writing poetry, farewells, and satire.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These articles also remind me that college is a place of transition, where students come and go every four years. Institutional knowledge\u2014knowing our department\u2019s history, experiences, and traditions\u2014is easily lost with so much turnover. As Alice and I train our successors, Chlo\u00eb Moore, Patrick Coy-Bjork, and Zoe Scheuerman, I realize how much I learned from Malcolm Cooke, our predecessor, and how much he must\u2019ve learned from Laura Berglund and Sophie Hilker, his predecessors, and on and on all the way back to Jens Tamang and Meghan Wilson, who wrote<\/span> the first issue on the <\/span>Words <\/span><\/i>website<\/span><\/a>. Maybe this is what led me into <\/span>The Words <\/span><\/i>archives in the first place, to learn about what we had kept (Bagel Mondays) and what we had left behind (the original title, <\/span>The Waverly<\/span><\/i>). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These archives have been especially important since the pandemic started in 2020. <\/span>The Ramblings<\/span><\/i>, more than anything else in the department, was a product of the isolation we felt during our year of online classes. A collaborative project between the student workers, this podcast showcased English majors in the class of 2021. For each episode, one of the hosts interviewed two seniors, and a producer wrote a short introduction for the episode before it was released on Spotify. This is one project that I\u2019d like to leave in the pandemic archive\u2014something to document how English Majors handled a year of online classes, and how they chose to connect with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m acutely aware that my own writing will end up in these archives, that some future editor might come across <\/span>these<\/span><\/i> Parting Words and think, \u201cSo that\u2019s what <\/span>The Words<\/span><\/i> looked like in 2022\u201d or \u201cThey made a podcast?\u201d My hope is that they\u2019ll look back at all the amazing articles that my peers have written since I joined the newsletter team in September of 2020\u2014<\/span>Alice\u2019s April fools piece<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Dalton\u2019s article about remote learning<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Malcolm\u2019s interview with Professor English about Afrofuturism<\/span><\/a>, to name just a few. This is our real impact on the department\u2014our ability to share stories from our friends, professors, and colleagues.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that brings me back to the beginning of my letter\u2014to thanking all of the wonderful people who\u2019ve made the English Department home for the last four years. It\u2019s no surprise that Jan Beebe is the first on this long list\u2014she is the department\u2019s glue and the person who keeps us coming back to the office everyday. My co-editors, Dalton and Alice, have made this year such an incredible end to my college career. To Chlo\u00eb, Patrick, and Zoe, I have so much confidence in your leadership, and I can\u2019t wait to see what you do with <\/span>The Words <\/span><\/i>next year. To all of the other student workers and writers\u2014you make work so exciting, and I\u2019ll miss seeing you in the office every week. Finally, to all of the professors in the department, you\u2019ve challenged me the last four years, and I can\u2019t thank you enough for all of the encouragement that you\u2019ve given me and my peers. Macalester wouldn\u2019t be the same without you.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much love,<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kira Schukar<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kira Schukar ’22 Dear Words Readers, Every May, The Words\u2019 Senior Editors share their parting words with the community. But if I\u2019m being honest, even though I\u2019ve known about this tradition for the last two years, I\u2019ve been at a loss for words for the entire month of April when I was supposed to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":913,"featured_media":0,"parent":4290,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4485","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4485"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7143,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4485\/revisions\/7143"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}