Come May 1st, I will be unemployed.

I am very, very excited. 

Not to pull the whole “I’m just a girl and too frail and dainty to work” excuse, which has mutilated its way into a post-ironic sort of pathetic taste in my mouth, but I don’t think I am meant for real employment. At least, not for the two months between the end of my current contract and my road trip to British Columbia following my convocation. Out West, I plan on securing a dumb job for a year before I inevitably enter grad school, and watch my partner go through the familiar woes of finishing his degree while I play The Sims 4. 

I cannot imagine the amount of relief I am patiently awaiting to feel when I am not only finally done with my degree, but also to be away from this city that I truly dislike with a passion. It feels sacrilegious to say as an Arthur editor, but consider the fact that I grew up here when I reveal how much anguish this place brings me. I have tried many times to leave this city, and every time I somehow get roped back in. The thought of staying here after graduation knocks me around like the roads of George Street. 

The only parts of this city I like are Sadleir House, The Only, and Arthur. 

I know what kind of person this outs me as, and I am okay with that. Mentally where I am at is one of passive disdain for Peterborough and the never ending freaks that operate within. However, before I lament on what kind of dumb job I am going to work on the crunchy West Coast, something very important takes priority: who the fuck is going to take over when I’m gone?

To be honest, I have no fucking clue. As Evan and I leave this golden throne for the masses to deal with, the next editors must come out of the closet shadows to run for editorship on their own accord. For once, the fate of this paper is completely out of our hands. We have no say as to who will be crowned our successors and, to be honest, it’s kind of terrifying.

In four months, a new secret editor will take up my mantle at the blue iMac in the Arthur office and, as I cannot appoint my successor, I’ve elected instead to offer some advice for those wishing to miss a lot of classes and develop severe carpel tunnel in their wrist. 

This job is a needy bitch. 

Like I just said, If you are a student you will miss a lot of classes. This is an inevitable part of the job. Being an editor is equal parts fun and cool, but it requires unfaltering dedication. Believe it or not, we did win a national award and that did come from several late nights and academic sacrifice. Despite the fact that we did not know we were nominated for the award we won, the point still stands: you will be pulled in two different directions and 99% of the time, you should pick Arthur. Former Volume 57 editor Brazil Gaffney-Knox wrote in her outgoing editorial that you should not be a full-time student and an editor at the same time, and I am inclined to agree. I have, however, been a full-time student my entire four-years at this school, two and a half of them being an editor at yours truly. It was fucking hard, I won’t try and lie to you and it remains to be, at the moment of writing, really fucking hard. My grades have been in a clear and steady decline since signing this contract and even though I wouldn’t wish to go through this ridiculous school walking any other path, it would be wrong of me not to forewarn future editors that your grades will suffer for the good of the paper, and you will become all too familiar to frequent burnout.

Which brings me to my next point: 

You have to really fucking love this. 

There is a line in Elif Batuman’s The Idiot which pokes fun at the editor of Harvard’s student paper and honestly, it’s pretty accurate. Your time, energy, and spiritual wellbeing will be at the beck and call of Arthur, and you need to reciprocate that same passion back or this will quickly turn into the most miserable job you have ever had. Be proud to be part of this rich pillar in Peterborough. Arthur is a uniquely special space in this community, and I beg the future of this paper to handle her with care. She has survived as long as she did because each editor left the paper in a better spot than they found it. If you don’t put in the care and effort needed to stoke this gay fire, the paper will only suffer in the next hands it finds itself. Don’t be that person.

You will never truly “clock out” like a traditional job.

Someone will always need something past 10PM and you will slowly hear phantom Slack notifications in your dreams. Half of this job is babysitting, and the other half is convincing yourself that this Email can’t actually kill you. When I am lying in bed at night, I am consistently going through the Arthur rolodex thinking of everything that needs to be done, every message I need to answer, every journalist that needs to get copy back, and literally anything else that revolves around this job until the glow of my two salt lamps lull me to sleep. Anyone who has worked any sort of managerial job I’m sure is rolling their eyes or has already closed the paper entirely. Whatever. But to anyone who, like me (for the most part), had limited to no experience in this field of work, it came as a bit of a surprise when burnout arrived at my door a lot faster than the minimum wage service jobs I had worked before. 

Find your people.

You will meet the best and worst types of people working this rag. I count myself endlessly lucky to have co-steered this ship with the two greatest and most intelligent people in this city, one of whom has gone off to cause trouble at the Examiner, and the other sits next to me as I write this creating graphics for this issue far beyond my skill or comprehension. Editing this paper with Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay for Volume 58 and carrying the torch sans-man into Volume 59 with “the” Evan Robins has been the time of my life. I have learned so much from my colleagues, and I without a doubt could not have done this without the support of these freaks, who I love dearly. Arthur is only as good as the team behind it. Find a good one and I promise it will be a lot easier. 

Enjoy it.

Please, for all it’s worth, enjoy this job. I think I have missed out on this one ever so slightly. In my first volume as editor I had a premonition that this would be the best job I’ve ever had, and it scared me shitless. I have loved my time here more than I am able to tell you on this page. I gave up a study abroad opportunity for this paper and as trying as this job can feel at times, I wouldn’t change anything about my years here. I still have a few months left at the helm, and if my content gets unhinged from here on out, it’s me taking my own advice. 

So, in the two months of my impending unemployment, I have a few ideas of how I am going to spend my time.

Firstly, I have the option as I move out of my apartment to smoke a lot of weed and become a grifter at my mother’s house. She has a hot tub, and my compact rural community I hail from is a hillbilly town where my pot smoking first flourished in the backseat of a car.

Secondly, I can re-open Hay Day and then suddenly the two months will have flown by before I look up from my iPad (you should add my farm and sell me stuff @saintlaurentcowboy).

Last and the probable fan favourite, I can become one of the freaks I so despise in the city. As I previously mentioned, I hope to secure a fake job in B.C., maybe a receptionist or some asshole that works in communications, but I have the opportunity to test the “fake job” waters in the private Facebook groups that self-indulgently claim to run this city. 

The only issue here is I am neither a 401K retiree with an inflated ego, and I do not care about an empty field that rhymes with RonnerWorth Park. It could be fun to fuck around for my two months in purgatory to strap on a black arm band and (allegedly) post threats to the mayor on a private Facebook page, but I fear I have too much self-respect to associate myself with that certain brand of unhinged and delusional freaks.

If you are interested in running for Editor in May 2025, please email editors@trentarthur.ca for the full list of requirements and eligibility. 

Here is to my impending unemployment and the future of Arthur.