As the fall semester comes to a close, production of the Foghorn is hitting pause until we return in January. For our last issue, our staff reflected on our first in-person semester since we went into lockdown almost two years ago.
We feel that, given the circumstances, we managed to work well together this semester. Moving back to a mostly in-person work modality was a significant and challenging adjustment for everyone. However, we feel that our time online helped prepare everyone for this semester and equipped us with new tools to accomplish tasks and communicate with one another more efficiently and successfully. We were able to overcome challenges presented to us as a team. Though being in-person was an interesting adjustment to our new normal, students at USF seemed to have handled it well, despite the expected hiccups.
All of our staff members are currently located in San Francisco, which gave us the highly anticipated opportunity to convene as a group both for work purposes and to get to know each other better outside of the office. We were also happy to have regained access to our office on the fourth floor of the University Center, where many of us spent late nights working and editing together and drawing inspiration from each other.
Whether it be due to graduations or the pursuit of internships on the other side of the country, our staff underwent a transitional period with multiple new members joining the team this past semester. As with any new role, these fresh faces are still learning the ropes, and we look forward to seeing them blossom as they dive further into their student journalism careers.
We are pleased with each other’s commitment to putting out work that we can be proud of. Additionally, we are grateful to our editor in chief, Lucia Verzola, and our managing editor and soon to be USF graduate, James Salazar, for leading our team with compassion, humor, and dedication.
Our publications this semester were not always flawless. We feel that, moving forward, fine-tuning the topics and opinions we publish to be products of critical thinking and problem solving is an improvement we should work towards and maintain for next semester and future generations of the paper. Straying away from pieces that voice aimless complaints at the University and pieces that do not provide a chance for readers to think critically about our topics will be a priority of ours. Instead, we hope to use our publication to report on creative solutions to problems we are addressing, especially within the University.
With the new COVID-19 variant, omicron, spreading, we are aware that our circumstances may yet again change. While this news is unsettling, we hope that it might serve as a wake-up call to those who have been denying the virus’ existence, and we hope people will prioritize public safety over their personal beliefs. However, we also feel that because San Francisco is very much a bubble, with high vaccination rates and low rates of infection, the new variant will not affect us, or the University, dramatically.
No matter the modality of our work next semester, we as a team feel confident that we will continue to dedicate ourselves to this publication, learning from our mistakes and creating new ways to voice the happenings of student life at the University.
