Some things never change about the first day of classes at WSU. There will be lost freshman, hungover sophomores, not enough seats in the class you want to get into, and a welcome column from the Evergreen editor-in-chief. So even though I’m not a part of it anymore, I thought I’d compile some of those semesterly sentiments from past years in a fun little puzzle. Guess which editor used the sentence(s) in their column:

Editor options: Christina, Brian, Lisa, Nick, Jacob

A. “The Daily Evergreen listens to your stories. We seek them out. We need them.”

B. “To all the incoming freshmen and transfer students reading the paper for the first time, welcome to WSU and I hope you enjoy reading our newspaper each day.”

C. “Even though I am saying goodbye to a semi-healthy diet and a house without a squirrel infestation, there is a certain sense of home within these wheat fields.”

D. “But there’s no time to sit around sentimentally watching wheat grow, because this fall is all about newness.”

E. “Pick up your free Evergreen on your way to class or when you’re around town. You never know when you’ll want to kill some time with our newest weekly feature: sudoku.”

Answers below.

Answers:

A. Jacob (fall 2006)

B. Christina (fall 2008)

C. Brian (spring 2008)

D. Me (fall 2007)

E. Nick (spring 2007)

Another fun but more depressing game is reading those columns and seeing how few of our goals we end up accomplishing from one year to the next. Or maybe it’s encouraging, because no matter how many disheartened and weary editors came before you, we keep setting the goals.

A more interesting game might be guessing how long each of us spent writing these, and how long prior to deadline we got started.

By the way, I wasn’t just deliberately leaving out summer editors because I think it’s less important or something. I’ve spent a summer in the Murrow basement and I know it’s no Sunday stroll. I just couldn’t consistently find those welcome columns, and they tend to have more of a “we few survivors can band together and prevail” tone than the generic semester welcome.