When we first came to Groton in Second Form, writing for The Circle Voice gave us a deeper look into the workings behind our new school. It also gave us a whole new group of intelligent, informed, and motivated peers to look up to, like Hadley’s Third Form prefect Elizabeth Salisbury ’14 (Editor-in-Chief at the time) who encouraged her to write more and apply for a position in the spring.

We’d like to think that by spending so much time with our fellow staff members battling with InDesign and coming up with headline ideas, we’ve become more like them. Why else would we all spend an hour and a half formatting a single opinion article to flow perfectly around a cutout of a cartoon of John Oliver? Why would we give up the most social time of the day, 10-12? Working for the CV has required a true love of the process, drawing only the most dedicated students.

The fun times we had with the staff, the connections we made, the feeling of being informed about campus affairs, and the training in extroversion that the CV gave us during our first four years encouraged us to apply to be co-Editors-in-Chief. The application was daunting, but we found ourselves falling into a trance as we answered questions about why we loved the CV and how we wanted to improve it.

But as we discovered this fall, running a paper is very different from any other job on the CV, from reporter to photographer to assistant editor. Suddenly, our work was more about managing our staff than sniffing out good news stories on campus (but we still did some of that). We became involved in every aspect of the process, at the somewhat-calm eye of a beautiful storm. And even though our main passion lay in the writing, we soon realized we enjoyed other parts of the paper too—laying out the paper on InDesign, copy editing articles until we were cross-eyed, and working with the younger staff on how to improve our final product.

This year, our most obvious influence on the CV has been the new design of the paper, in which we tried to retain the best parts of the old design. We have worked to accomplish the ambitious but practical plan we devised at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s summer workshop: a sleeker, updated design with improved graphics, diversifying our coverage, and a completely redesigned website.

Other significant new developments for the CV include our organization of staff, namely replacing the copy editor and staff writer positions with “reporters,” and trying to recruit more photographers and cartoonists than we’ve had in the past, and our new Mac desktop computers, of course! Our headlining piece about Roll Call attendance from the October 21st issue actually precipitated action from the administration—Mr. Maqubela began a push to revitalize the longstanding tradition. It felt pretty awesome to witness those changes and to know that they were a direct result of our paper.

There are a lot of things we already miss about the paper. Next fall, we’ll miss the hectic meetings in the Webb Marshall Room, the late nights in the CV room, the satisfaction when the whole school swarms around the table outside of the Schoolroom to pick up the latest issue. Most of all, however, we’ll miss everyone who was a part of the process. So thank you Ms. Friedman and the 2016-17 staff. We know we’re leaving the paper in the best of hands as we graduate. Annie and Christian, good luck! We can’t wait to see where the CV goes from here.