Real friends

This past weekend, the Scene-iors decided to make the trip down to my hometown of Atlanta for the Shaky Knees Music Festival. This past weekend, I made the great decision to get sick right before the trip, effectively ending my festival experience before it even started.

I was pretty devastated that I was missing what would have been a great capstone on four years at Scene, but leave it to the great group of writers that I have the privilege to call friends to think about me while they were all having a blast, because they got me my new favorite t-shirt from my favorite band at the festival, The Pixies.

I’ve written about this before as part of our collective last Scene article, but I love all the friends I’ve made here at The Observer and am beyond proud to be part of their ranks.

Whether it’s discussing our latest Kanye album rankings in the group chat or supporting each other’s burgeoning artistic careers at house shows or hijacking the aux cord at the beer pong tournament and effectively turning it into a Death Grips party, I know that the Scene kids are always going to have a fun time.

To all my friends who have grown up with me through the past four years of obscure copyediting errors, censored Scenecast banter and terrifying online comments, thanks for all the great memories. It’s been quite the ride coming in from my first ever album review (of Avicii, of course) to the last Scene picks. I know that I can count on any one of you to come have my back when the Finni’s DJ plays “Mr. Brightside” one too many times.

To all the writers and editors who mentored me, thanks for helping shape me into the person I am today. I will never forget all the great feedback I got on that terrible Avicii review, the support you gave when an interviewee started threatening me over email and the time when Scene banned music reviews for a semester.

To all the journalists who will continue the work of Scene into next year, thanks for keeping this great thing going. It’s been a pleasure getting to know all of you and your great hot takes. But it’s also been a heart attack reading all of your articles because you’re all way better at this than I was as freshman.

And to all the aspiring critics who have yet to join Scene, welcome home. These guys are the realest friends you’ll have in your time at Notre Dame.