THE DIRTY STRUGGLE

BY YUE YI PENG

From the editor

Dear readers of The Lowell,

With our last issue of the year being published, we can’t help but think about the past and future of our publication: everything we’ve accomplished this past year, along with all the experiences that we’ve shared, and what the next chapter of The Lowell will look like.

In April, the staff of The Lowell had the opportunity to attend a field trip to the San Francisco Chronicle and hear from reporters, photographers, and illustrators. We had a great time learning and gaining inspiration from these role models. Hearing about their career journeys gave us a better picture of what our futures could look like, whether that be through joining our college newspaper, writing for different publications, or even majoring in journalism.

Looking to the future has left many of us thinking about college, majors, and what our next four years will look like. In our cover story, “Paycheck or passion?,” we explore the pressures Lowell students face when deciding their career paths. For many, this means pursuing a financially stable major, even when that means sacrificing their passions.

For us, leaving for college means leaving a fundamental part of high school: working on this publication. The thought of moving on from The Lowell has always existed in the back of our minds, but now that the time is here, it’s absolutely surreal. Working on this publication has been a full-time job, both physically and mentally. It’s entailed working tirelessly to meet with community members, organizing magazine issues, and hitting deadlines. We created six issues this year, and it’s hard to say goodbye to all the reporting and documenting we’ve added to Lowell’s history, as well as the community we’ve built.

In the last two months, we have been training our assistant editors, which has left us thinking about how our publication continues to grow. Every year, we continue to develop new ideas, produce print issues, and improve our management systems. All of our content would not be possible without our overwhelming love for what we do. We leave this publication knowing, and assuring you, that our assistant editors are dedicated and love what they do just as much as we do, and will continue to deliver both creative and quality content.

It is the end of a chapter for us, but once again a start of a new one for The Lowell. Thank you to all our readers and supporters, including the Lowell Alumni Association. We hope you enjoy the last issue of this school year.

Goodbye, Editors-in-Chief, Chloe Chon, Kelcie Lee, and Marlena Rohde