Leaving The California Aggie after three years of comics and columns
To the readers of The Aggie’s opinion page (all six of you), I am announcing that I will be leaving at the end of this quarter. My enrollment has ended and I will be be graduating with bachelor’s degrees in both art studio and film studies, which means I’ll either be twice as famous or twice as unemployable. It’s been a long three years since I started working here as a volunteer cartoonist and it has been a sublime experience.
Back in 2013, my art peer advisor informed me that the newspaper was accepting cartoon submissions. I assumed there would be a lot of competition from other students, so I drew 10 good drafts in the hope that at least one would be accepted. In the end, it turned out that I was the only one sending the newspaper anything. My experience in humor writing began much later, only this year. It felt like actual journalism with the exception that I was allowed to make up facts and not do any real research.
Before I leave, I want to publicly thank all the good people I’ve worked with over the years. They’re far more talented and successful than I am, and I hope they get the careers they rightfully deserve. I’d like to thank my first editor, Melissa Dittrich. You were the one I worked with first so you get mentioned first. Second, I’ll thank my other prior editor, Gabi Hamlett. You’re probably not reading this but you deserve credit anyway. I’d like to thank sports editor Bryan Sykes simply because you’re cool. Next is social media manager Angela Willis for being the nicest person in the office. You rock. Also, I’d like to thank features editor Ellie Dierking for your encouraging comments. Also, thank you Ritika Iyer and Scott Dresser. You two are totally boss, and even though I’m leaving soon and can talk smack about you, I won’t because you both are totally boss. I’d also like to thank “the cute one” (you know who you are). Thank you to the other humorists at the opinion desk, and most importantly, thank you Eli Flesch for creating the humor desk in the first place. You’ve worked harder than all of us put together, which is probably true since you have to check all our work to cross out the profanity and tasteless egghead jokes.
Lastly, thank you to the entire UC Davis campus. You are a fantastic university, and I am grateful to have studied here (especially during Thursday mojito nights). When people think of UC Davis, they will picture a medical student on a high wheel bicycle learning to milk a cow via the instruction of a smiling blue mustang who’s getting pepper sprayed by riot police. But when I think of UC Davis, I’ll picture the best days of my life.
