We are already at the semester’s end. Crammed fifth-floor study rooms will soon give way to crammed suitcases as our community gears up for winter break. Student life in Sama Tower gradually comes to a halt, and students, staff and faculty trickle out from their home on Electra Street, catching cars, buses and airplanes back to their different corners of the globe. When Sama opens its doors for January Term, a new group will occupy its floors, apartments and study rooms.

At the end of every semester at NYU Abu Dhabi, we find ourselves in a state of flux. Every semester and J-Term brings a unique mix of students and faculty with their own personalities, talents and worldviews. But with each new cohort, the school communities we knew in past semesters never quite come back to us. Whether it’s a student returning to their home campus in Washington Square, an upperclassman leaving to study abroad or a longtime professor saying his final goodbye to Abu Dhabi, NYUAD is never constant.

We live in a community defined by flux. Like the rapidly developing country in which we are based and the many transient individuals who make their way through it, our setting is unsteady. A sense of impermanence permeates many aspects of our lives here, reflected on the windows of the Downtown Campus as it enters its final spring with NYUAD. The recent Candidate Weekend, complete with bright-faced young scholars hoping to be a part of the class of 2018, reminds us that our adopted community will eventually be theirs.

The change is perpetually reproducing itself — it is beyond our control. But perhaps it is this impermanence that makes our overlapping tenures at NYUAD so valuable. Outside of the frenzy of papers and Foundations of Science problem sets, there is a walk through Madinat Zayed or a weekend spent by the corniche. These brief moments, shared with others passing through, come to define our shifting NYUAD community.

Like the university that surrounds us, our team at The Gazelle transforms with each new semester. Many who have been fundamental in shaping our publication are leaving for exciting new experiences next semester; some are studying abroad while others are returning to New York. We firmly believe that leaving does not mean saying goodbye for good. Still, we probably won't all be together in the same place again — all the more reason to celebrate the present.

 

Happy holidays,

Alistair Blacklock

Editor-in-Chief, 2nd Managing Team