Letter from the Editor

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL

Dear Reader,

Putting pen to paper has never felt so hard. As I sit in my room and attempt to write my final letter to you, I find myself stopping every minute. Memories of my time spent writing for this paper, some going as far back as freshman year, come flooding in. Processing each of these on its own is a joy; reflecting on them collectively, however, pains me as I realize I can never fully convey all that the Scroll has given me in one letter. Nonetheless, I can still offer you a glimpse into my Scroll experience. Hopefully after you read this, you’ll go out there and find something so worth doing for you as the Scroll has been for me; oh, and of course, continue to read The Deerfield Scroll.

It is 7:00 p.m. on Monday, September 19, 2022. 14-year-old me struggles to squeeze my 110-pound frame between two burly juniors blocking the door to the Scroll room. Only ten minutes prior, I had shamelessly stopped a random girl on the path to ask her if she knew the way to the basement of the Kendall building. Now that I was there however, every neuron in my brain screamed at me to leave. For one, the atmosphere was terrible. The antique lights bathed the room in a dingy yellow, casting a depressing sensation that consumed me like a cloud. The second, and by far more important motivator however, was how insignificant I felt. The small, shy introvert that still defines me today felt worthless after listening to the taller, more sophisticated editors pitch out article ideas. Yet for some inexplicable reason, I still stayed. 

It is 9:48 p.m on Friday, February 23, 2024. 15-year-old me sits underneath the same dingy lights that I hated so much a year ago. In front of me, my MacBook is down to its last 10% power, drained by the fifteen tabs I have open: each representing an article I’ve edited since I first arrived at the Scroll room two hours prior. Tired beyond relief, I have a decision to make: either I could borrow a charger from my Editor-in-Chief and continue revising articles, or I could leave the Scroll room now and go back to sleep. For the same inexplicable reason, I borrow a charger and go straight back to work. 

It is 6:30 a.m on Sunday, March 2, 2025. 16-year-old me rises out of bed and gets ready for the day. Grabbing the stack of newspapers I picked up from the Scroll room the night prior, I head over from OBC to the Koch center: the furthest I can be from the allure of my bed where I copy edit every page of the February issue for the next three hours. By 8:30 a.m. my head is already drooping, yet I resist the urge to sleep and continue diligently marking up the page. I’m barely conscious at this point. I don’t know why I’m doing this instead of sleeping, yet I continue to edit all the same. 

Today is Tuesday, May 5, 2026. Currently, it is half past one. For the past four hours, as I have struggled to come up with my final letter to you, I have reminisced over my entire Scroll career. In doing so, the same inexplicable motivator that has always brought me back to the Scroll becomes a recurring theme. And only now that my Scroll tenure comes to a close, that I finally realize what the motivator truly was: it was your readership.

In freshman year, when I felt worthless and unheard, it was your readership that gave me my worth. In sophomore and junior year, when I contemplated why I did the Scroll when so many of my other friends hung out with each other or had fun on weekend nights, it was because of you that gave me purpose in creating a paper worth reading. And now in my senior spring, when I could be doing a million other things in my final days at the Academy, I chose to spend them writing for this paper because I know you are on the other side reading them.

So thank you. Thank you for sticking with me for all four years, for watching me grow from a small, immature 14 year old to a slightly less small, still immature 17 year old. Thank you for giving me a platform to write on, a purpose to create something that is bigger than myself, that transcends my four years here. Thank you for transforming the Scroll room, turning it from a place I once found dim to my favorite spot on campus, a place that contains my most cherished memories of these short Deerfield days. Thank you for allowing me to form forever friendships with the class of 2023 to 2029, for connecting me with some of my best friends throughout high school. For an average kid from a small town in New Jersey, I could never have dreamed of something so spectacular. 

Yours in Service,

John Qi Liu