For the poor mortals who have not been so lucky as to be able to be members of The Nexus, press nights are something that only exist in concept, or worse, not at all. For the lucky denizens of this paper, however, press nights are a culmination—of weeks of hard work, hours of editing, and page designs that have been revised and re-revised.

As an event, it’s a lot of fun—imagine getting two entire days after school to work on a passion project with people who are similarly impassioned (kinda), and then multiply that by two for every three weeks of the academic year. And as each night passes, you grow ever closer with these classmates, until one day, you’re basically just getting dinner with some of your closest friends.

The dinner, of course, is what I’m driving at. During press nights, dinners are provided by a member of the staff. We’ve run a bit of a gauntlet, from In-n-out cheeseburgers to Costco pizza  to big trays of Thai food to our own individual pizzas from PizzaRev to homemade meals. No matter what’s being provided, however, everything’s always delicious, a fact that’s usually compounded by the hours we’ve spent before and are going to spend after eating, working away at the paper.

Recently, however, we’ve all sensed that the clock is running out. As a staff, I think we’re growing closer together, faster than we ever have. And not to kill the metaphor, it’s been lovely getting to know what everyone brings to the table—from Caitlynn’s wit and her Nerds Gummy Clusters, to Lucy’s kindness and the sweetness of her Swedish Fish, to Swasti’s compassion and the juice boxes she always has in hand—even as it’s just as bittersweet because we have so little time left.

For our last press night, we even had an alumni special feature—Sara Brownlee (‘22) brought back an old favorite in the form of homemade walking tacos. Two other Nexus alumni also popped in, and as we all gathered around the table to fill our bags of Doritos with our preferred taco components, I felt like a freshman again, in the best way possible. 

For me, especially, these last occasions have been bittersweet—I’ve attended every press night since the beginning of my freshman year and I know I’m going to miss the warmth they’ve regularly provided. This last bite? 10/10.