Week of hell was worth it

Over the past week, I spent more than 80 hours working on The Sentinel, including a stint until 5 a.m. this morning where I only slept for 2.5 hours before returning to the office at 8. While that virus proved to be nothing more than a mere hindrance, it still evoked a sentiment from me concerning all those involved with the paper: Most people – in all their splendid glory, their greatest successes and most brilliant moments – are no more than friggin’ retards.

As a staff, we are the greatest in the country. Individually? May God have mercy on our souls.

At certain points I wanted to throw computers from windows, toss people down stairs and very sincerely beat the living shit out of every single person within 100-feet of me and my computer. Alas, I obliged to the whims of what my advisor would undoubtedly wish (me not doing any of those things), and instead tried teaching.

Holy hell, it actually worked.

I soon realized that perhaps the reason for my disdain was my lack of communication. Nevertheless, every soul with a by-line in MY paper (I say “my paper” because I treat this thing like it’s the fruit of my loins) literally improved in one aspect or another last week.

But – while I seemingly address this very statement following each new Sentinel – we became a better college newspaper than the previous issue, and in the process created the most visually stunning masterpiece North Idaho College has ever known.

Here are some of my favorite pages from this issue (see all of my favorites here).

THE COVER (A1)
Nils (our advisor) disagreed on the importance of the male and female figures underneath the headline “Enrollment Explodes…” And, just like most issues, I went with my instinct and ran the design as I imagined it, rather than succumbing to Nil’s advice. I know he’s right – they should actually mean something – but I still think they look good the way I eventually printed, and if a paper looks good, people will pick it up. But, who knows, Nils is usually right.

OPINION PAGE (A8)
When Noah told me his idea for the headline concerning this article (Octopussy), I originally said, “No dice.” When he informed me it was a play off a James Bond movie, however, I instantly realized the design possibilities. With the help of our talented staff artist, we produced what has now become my all-time favorite page design. And the article – about a lady who birthed eight children through in-vetro fertilization – is quite humorous.

 

NEWS PAGE (A2)
I toyed with the design on this page for almost four days. I had roughly five or six different ideas, but on Saturday decided to go with this. I would have much rather not use John as the “model” in the page simply because he is on the Sentinel staff (and Nils was, again, vehemently against the idea of using a staff member’s photo). But overall, it works. Sure, his head grew a little upon seeing his huge picture on page A2, but he posed perfectly for the exact photo I wanted. The best part about the photo illustration is that I photoshopped it to look like NIC’s science building is in the background: Since guns are illegal on college campuses, we would undoubtedly get in major trouble had we taken this picture for real.

 

LIFESTYLES (B1)
Now this little ditty was busted out originally over two hours on Sunday night. Although, for some reason, unbeknownst to me, I accidentally saved a blank page over the file. I spent the subsequent 45 minutes combing the internet in search of a remedy – there were none. The nice thing, though, is that I only took 22 minutes to recreate the page from scratch; thank God I had a printout to go by.

 

Obviously there were more (18 more pages, to be exact), but these are by far my favorite of the issue. And the greatest solace I have is knowing we should be 100% error-free. After last issue’s botched abortion of a typo-ridden paper, we spent countless hours the past few days screening printouts for problematic prose.

While we obviously spent the extra effort to make this baby perfect for San Diego’s competition, it feels good to offer students a phenomenal paper. Hopefully they’ll actually read it.