Hazel Gunapala '12 talks about her impending break-up with the Big Red. 

College may be coming to an end, but the fun never has to.

Former Editor in Chief Keenan Weatherford talks about the beauty of vocabulary and living life "effectively wild" in his final column ever.

“This mass of third rate product from Sun editors and ‘Senior Writers’ is most discouraging. I shudder at what your junior writers produce and will not even read any of their writing for fear of nausea or worse,” one dedicated reader wrote during my tenure as associate editor of this paper.

For over a year, all letters to the editor arrived in my mailbox, greeting me each groggy morning after another late night at The Sun, with rants no less passionate than that one above. You see, my job required that I select the letters to the editor for publication.

Dear Cornell,

Well, everything started with a letter, so it is only fitting that I end with one.

I was eight years old when I first decided I wanted to go to Cornell. A visit with my family to the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles ignited in me a desire to be a hotelier. My third grade self, thinking he had found his life’s passion, sought out every opportunity to pursue it. I collected piles of miniature shampoo bottles and little soap bars at every hotel I visited.

I have been given a lot of advice during my tenure at The Sun — oxford commas are sacrilegious, prepositional phrases ought not to be separated in headlines and never head to The Sun without a cup of coffee. After being elected editor in chief, however, one nugget really stuck: Beware of that “what the fuck?” moment that hits you on your first night in the big office at 139 W. State St.

“I was happiest when I was all alone — and it was very late at night, and I was walking up the hill after having helped put The Sun to bed. All the other University people, teachers and students alike, were asleep. They had been playing games all day long with what was known about real life. ... We on The Sun were already in the midst of real life. By God, if we weren’t!”

As the 127th editorial board puts this final paper of 2009 to bed, we reflect on some turbulent times on the Hill. This past year, the community stood by as our fair University implemented drastic changes that will fundamentally alter the character of Cornell.

Some advice to majority of columnists who will write their last article in May: Oscar speeches should stay in L.A. This being my final column, I will seek to avoid the traditional laundry list of thank you’s, emotional fare thee wells and pompous proselytizing that go hand-in-hand with these goodbyes. But I am also not going to waste my last chance to speak to The Sun’s faithful readership discussing Obama drama, prison politics or the much anticipated release of the sequel to Hustler porno “Who’s Naylin’ Paylin.” Rather, this article is a west coaster’s mea culpa — an apology for my close mindedness and an explanation of my transformation.