From the As­sis­tant Ed­i­tor

Hello Bethel Read­ers, 

Thank you so much for tak­ing the time to read what we have worked so hard on. I hope you en­joyed my cross­words. I’ve had a blast mak­ing them. They were dif­fi­cult be­cause I did them by hand. This is an ex­pe­ri­ence I rec­om­mend fully. I’d start with a 5x5 if you want to ex­per­i­ment with mak­ing one your­self, but here is the recipe for mak­ing a 15x15 cross­word by hand. Get 3-4 scrab­ble games to­gether, tak­ing all the let­ters out and or­ga­niz­ing them into piles. Or­ga­niz­ing is a lit­tle un­nec­es­sary, but it does make it eas­ier to put let­ters down quickly later on. Next, find a theme, with a 15-let­ter word you put in the mid­dle for the across and three or four big words you slap down for down clues. From there, through sweat and de­ter­mi­na­tion, fill in the rest, putting down black squares af­ter any word you have fin­ished.  

This print edi­tion will be the last print edi­tion I will work on. This let­ter is some­thing of a swan song for my three se­mes­ters work­ing at the Bethel Bea­con. I want to fo­cus on four ar­eas of my grate­ful­ness from writ­ing and edit­ing for my friends.  

The first is how much I ap­pre­ci­ate the gra­cious­ness of my writ­ers and the peo­ple I in­ter­view. I want to thank those who have edited for and writ­ten for The Bea­con. I am grate­ful for the amount of knowl­edge I have learned from those I in­ter­viewed. Your knowl­edge is be­yond valu­able and Bethel is lucky to have you all. I am grate­ful for the amount of com­radery that my peers who write for the Bethel Bea­con have given me. 

The sec­ond is how much I have ap­pre­ci­ated my boss, Su­san Miller, through­out these se­mes­ters. I know my AP style was­n’t and still might not be the best, and my edit­ing skills were pre­vi­ously all about re­mov­ing thats rather than ox­ford com­mas, but I want to say how grate­ful I am to be un­der your tute­lage and learn every bit of in­for­ma­tion I can from your years of work in the jour­nal­ism field. Many thanks for the ad­vice you have given me and will con­tinue to give me as I con­tinue to work for the Bea­con for these last few weeks. I know your ad­vice will come in handy sooner rather than later. 

The third is how much I ap­pre­ci­ate my fel­low ed­i­tor at the Bethel Bea­con, Bri­anna Dens­more. Your fire and en­thu­si­asm for the Bethel Bea­con is un­der­ap­pre­ci­ated. Your fire and en­thu­si­asm for the snow is un­for­tu­nate but war­ranted. Any­ways, I know your fire will keep the Bethel Bea­con lit, and your en­thu­si­asm will light a fire for a new gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers.  

Lastly, thank you to all our read­ers for sup­port­ing us to keep this pa­per go­ing. 

Many thanks, 

Josiah “Jo” Hack­ett