As we inch closer and closer to the end of another school year, we thought it best to reflect on what may well have been the worst year (and a half) of our lives. As such, we dedicated the majority of this issue to remembering some of our favorite articles from this past school year. However, we didn’t want to leave you with just a recap, so we’ve included two new articles from some fantastic writers.

Before we delve into a more personal topic in this Editor’s Desk, we wanted to share some words of encouragement to those struggling to finish the semester strong. This year has sucked, plain and simple. For anyone out there struggling with burnout, it will be ok. Take some time for yourself as needed. Read a book, watch a movie, play a video game! Your projects will get done, and they aren’t worth the strain we put on our bodies to try and finish them all at once. We could go on with some “Rome wasn’t built in a day” quote, but we think you get the point. Take care of yourselves, Comets.

Now is the fun — and admittedly selfish — part of this month’s Editor Desk. Three of the current editorial staff will be graduating at the end of the semester, as such we thought it would be nice to allow them to speak on their experiences and reflect on their time at AMP.

Tanner Lewis – Managing Editor
The first time I ever went to a pitch meeting for AMP, I chickened out and waited for the next month to write. If I could go back in time I would have forced myself to write that month, as it would have introduced me to an organization of wildly diverse and wonderful personalities. Once I wrote my first article, I knew that I would be coming back to write again. That turned into me applying for a position as the Assistant Marketing Director, which then turned into me applying and becoming the Managing Editor of AMP. I am so happy to have been involved in AMP, even in the face of our greatest challenge for the magazine since the hacking of our website. I can say with the utmost confidence, that AMP is in amazing hands next year and the years after. I cannot wait to see what AMP is able to do once they are back on campus. I recommend everyone be on the lookout for next year’s team. They are going to do amazing things.

Zach Greenberg – Marketing Director
I never worked with AMP before this past year, when a good friend encouraged me to apply for Marketing Director, and I’m so glad that I’ve had this opportunity. Finding new ways to torture our followers with increasingly atrocious and decreasingly coherent posts. I will never forget my first full-length watch of Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, the award-winning AMP Watches cinematic masterpiece, nor will I forget the lovely team I worked with this past year. This is one of the funniest groups I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of, I will miss you all very dearly. See you soon /threat.

Christi Lazutkin – Assistant Art Director
Frankly, I’m not really sure why I ever got this far. I was at AMP as a contributor, doing back page comics and layouts for three years before I felt I was competent enough to send in an application. Even now, I suffer from impostor syndrome at the thought of declaring I “learned a single goddamn thing from all of this.” That’s why it means a lot to me that these guys gave me a shot, and that their incarnations in previous years encouraged me up to this point. It all started with an uncomfortably bare Temoc drawing I sent in, expecting it to get rejected. Somehow, it ended up with me signing December Temoc pages, designing a Temoc body pillow on AMP’s request, and even branching out into writing satirical works of my own. It feels very fake and unreal to be able to say I had such a significant presence at UTD, but it’s all because of my time at AMP! Thank you to everyone who’s seen, or read, or talked about the stuff I made. I’m still working on the whole impostor syndrome thing, but I believe in you guys (who seem to believe in me). Hopefully, everything we created for AMP made your campus experience a better one. 🙂

In some final parting words, we want to remind everyone in our UTD family to stay safe over this coming summer. We’ll see you again in the Fall. Goodbye for now, Comets.