Editor’s note: A 30 column is a chance for departing permanent staff to say farewell and reflect on their time spent in The Daily Texan basement office. The term comes from the typesetting mark (—30—) to denote the end of a line. 

Frankly, this feels a bit funny. For two and a half years, I have worked in my beloved design department just trying to make words look pretty, never writing them. Here I am now, a designer, writing amongst some of the best young writers and future journalists in the country. Luckily, because of this I have no hesitation in compromising my journalistic integrity and continuing the rest of this farewell in the form of a listicle. Here are the top 10 reasons I love The Daily Texan: 

1. It is a mad house. 

There is no other explanation to explain why these overworked, underpaid students continue to come back to work every night and blow my mind with their intelligence, creativity and drive. 

2. Halal Bros’ loaded french fries. 

The white sauce speaks for itself.

3. “Sexotheque” 

It is no longer just a song, but an anthem to the office. Groan all you want, a classic can never
be overplayed. 

4. It is a place to grow 

Though cheesy, it is the truth. To see myself grow from an issue staffer to the editor of a department is a testament to how much you can learn from the bad asses working
alongside you. 

*Note: please ignore any infographic I created for my first three semesters. They are poor representation of this growth stuff I’m talking about. 

5. The office fire of 2016

6. Naps 

I interpret my grotesque number of naps taken in this office as a sign of comfortability with the basement. It is a safe space to kill time between classes and catch up on the sleep you missed from working in the same office the
night before.

7. Tryout pizza

Tryout pizzas are like the tryouts themselves: repetitive, boring and always in unhealthy quantities. Yet, at the end of the day we still come back for more.

8. The Reese’s rat

9. The design department 

My home away from home, the design department is where I found a place at this monstrosity of a university. We are a tiny but mighty department, and I’ll be damned if I ever find a group of people more collectively smart and creative in my life. 

10. The people 

There are the dads in sports, the mad scientists in SciTech, the troopers in news, the funny people who make even funnier comics, Spielberg’s protégés in video, the unseen coders in tech, the cool kids writing about life and art, the opinionated, the tweeters and Instagram feeders, the copy kittens correcting stories and my poor choices in music, the photographers who I’m still waiting on a caption from and the people with superhuman abilities managing them all. Oh, and that little department bringing all these beautiful people together to make papers,
the designers. 

I’ve helped make a lot papers over two and a half years, but what made each special was making them with all of you. Not my colleagues, but my friends. 

Oh, and Peter Chen is not bad.

—30—