As always, December comes tumbling down over autumn, and before we have a moment to look up, first semester has come and gone. Eighth and ninth graders desperately search for a place to hang out inside, tenth and eleventh graders reel from the excessive amount of APs they’re all inevitably taking, and seniors panic at the swiftness of youth. Faculty and staff chuckle as they overhear the urgency in students’ voices, knowing that we’ll soon be begging for issues as retrospectively simple as those we approach this December. 

Before you sprint into winter break, I hope you take a chance to appreciate the stress, the urgency, the swiftness that we so often resent. Yes, school is overwhelming. Yes, high school drama is overwhelmingly inconvenient. Yes, you will grow old. But there is value in those realizations. I encourage everyone to take a moment to nurse those stresses, to acknowledge and then eventually release them. To quote author Andre Acimen’s novel Call Me By Your Name, “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with some[thing] new.” 

I hope these articles, as varied in subject as they may be, encourage you to be mindful of the anxiety that the passing of first semester leaves and the holiday season often brings. Not to distract or bury, but to instill a sense of acceptance and peace. The Woodward Post’s December Issue is truly unique, insightful, and personal, and I hope the writers’ and editors’ cognizance inspires your own. 

Best, 

Virginia ‘20