After 12 editions of The Nexus, 137 pages, and 192 hours of press night, our staff of 31 is grateful to so many more people than can fit in this 600-word space and is more deeply appreciative of them than these words can accurately convey. But, we’ll try. 

So thank you, the many interviewees who have populated our paper with your colorful stories and keen insights, putting up with late-night follow-up questions and rescheduled interviews. Your stories continue to inspire us, and hopefully the student body as well. We would not have a paper without you, so thank you for letting us share your stories.

To the coaches who have put us in contact with so many brilliant athletes and have gracefully allowed us onto their sidelines to capture action shots of their players: the sports section owes you a debt of gratitude. To those athletes, thank you  for taking so much time to talk with us in the midst of your busy schedules. 

We’d also like to thank the under-appreciated custodians. Thank you for putting up with our overflowing press night trashcans and for keeping our home base clean. 

We are immensely grateful to our district board members, and the many district personnel whom we have reached out to, for taking time out of their busy schedules to aid us in our information-seeking. 

We’d also like to affectionately mention Bob McHeffey, who has been an incredible ally and valued critic since the paper’s inception. Happy retirement, Bob!

To Dr. Darshana Patel, thank you so much for being one of The Nexus’s most vocal supporters, always finding time for interviews and supporting us on our article-writing journeys. 

To all Nexus parents, we’d like to thank you for the obvious — raising, feeding, and clothing us — but also for the more unsung aspects of parenting. Thank you for carting your kids without licenses around to press nights and various events, and thank you for providing press night dinners every three weeks; The Nexus would be a much more hangry place without you. 

We’d like to thank the many Homeroom teachers who aid us in distributing the paper to your students. Thank you for your welcoming greetings in the morning as we pass out our paper, and especially to those teachers who get their Homerooms excited about The Nexus — specifically Bruce Hubschmidt, who goes so far as to make trivia on the day’s paper. 

And thank you to Gardena Valley Offset, and our Customer Service Manager  Kelly Barth, who turns our many-gigabyte files into a physical object that so many people can enjoy. You’ve been a pleasure to work with.

We have an  incredible amount of gratitude for Jeff Wenger and Melanie DelaCruz — our advisers. Your stewardship of this paper and its staff is so monumental: you’ve taught us to craft meaningful stories and improved our writing tremendously. You’ve turned us from freshman amoebas into confident writers with your constructive criticism and valued advice. You bring us back down to earth when our lofty ideas stretch too far, and you ensure that our paper is the best it can be. We could not do this without you, so thank you both. 

And, last but not least, thank you, our readers, for giving The Nexus our purpose and audience. No one is forcing you to pick up the paper, yet you do. You read the stories that took us hours to source and write, you give us feedback and article ideas, you show interest and support for our paper every time you crack open its pages. Without an audience, journalism has no impact. In a way, you give us our voice.