Penn Unbuttoned: A Toast To 2013, What's To Come
January 23, 2014 at 2:00 pm
One hundred and sixteen days until graduation. Pretty soon I'll be packing up my college life and starting anew as a "real person." It's finally time for me to pass on the torch. Exciting changes are coming, and I'm back for one last post before I let this blog sow its wild oats without me. So follow along on this short adventure and maybe you'll learn a thing or two about Under The Button.
Some 4 semesters ago, I began writing for UTB. Those were the days when we had Marathon and Philly Diner, when we lost our dear Skulls, and when we, by some stroke of SPEC wizardry, scored Passion Pit and Tiësto. We saw James Franco, Ariana Huffington, and Bill Clinton. We also saw things like this and this. Clearly we've had ups, we've had downs, and we've had middles.
Since then, UTB has become more than just a blog. It became a brand of its own. Serving as the blog's first official Editor-In-Chief after becoming independent of 34th Street has been incredibly rewarding and honestly one of the funnest experiences I've ever had. After all the frantic emails, thousands of texts, and never-ending debauchery, we ended the year with 1.7 million pageviews.
To this I owe the marvelous staff of editors and contributors, a bunch of vastly diverse students whose thirst for news and knack for comedic writing made my job so much easier. Maintaining ~4,000+ visitors per day ain't easy, but we got there together. I'm so proud of all of you.
The next kween to take the throne of this blogdom will be the talented and incredibly funny Ben Lerner. Follow him on Twitter and I promise you'll never be behind on pop culture.
To the readers, commenters, tipsters, and haterz: thank you! Seriously, you make this job worth it, even if we occasionally do something basic. Holding us accountable makes us stronger as a team and as a publication, so keep flooding our inboxes with your news tips and general commentary.
If you made it this far (God bless), expect a great year ahead at Under The Button. And don't forget to do your part.
Lylas,
Jesse