While the man cave is not a new occurrence on our staff, it is always a good source of entertainment while working throughout the middle of a deadline.

Sarah speaking:

On the very first day of class, everyone sort of un-officially picked their seats for the rest of the year. On that first day, almost all of the male staff members gravitated towards each other into the second row of our classroom. This is the first year I have been on staff where there have even been enough guys to fill an entire row and then some out of our four rows of computers. I’m not entirely sure if the guys in the man cave have some sort of unspeakable bond, but they always seem to be playing games on Miniclip in sync.

Sometimes I’m not used to all of the testosterone. Just last week, Jill and I discovered that the boys had all written “dibs” on sticky notes and put them on a particular poster we have in the j-room. Every year, we have a white elephant Christmas party and this year someone bought some cheap posters including a so-called, “Bikini Babes” poster. All of the guys have now staked their claim. More on that to come: the girls may be staging a come back. Even though I sometimes feel a bit out of place in the man cave and get tired of telling some of the guys to focus on their work, I am really glad that we have more gender diversity on staff this year. It is much easier to represent a student body when your staff actually reflects the student body gender ratios.

Jill speaking:

I didn’t even know that the man cave existed until about a week before winter break, when our staff wrote thank you letters to various people they had interviewed, talked to, etc. Sarah and I received a thank you letter from one of our reporters Ryan Fullerton. The envelope’s return address read:

Ryan Fullerton

Man Cave Row

Seat four

Upon further investigation of said “Man Cave Row” I discovered a sign taped to the outside of the second row, with “The Man Cave” written across it in somewhat sloppy handwriting. I had never noticed before, but that row was entirely filled by the majority of our male staff. Since then we have found multiple remnants of the man cave, such as a tissue with an, um, “interesting” drawing on it in the second row tissue box, which was discovered just last week. I would just like to thank these boys for always providing endless entertainment (and frustrations … get off of the video games) throughout the year.

Lesson of the week:

1. You can always count on the man cave boys for entertainment throughout seemingly endless deadlines.

Lesson 24 of being an editor-in-chief: Check.