By Chris Derrett
Editor in chief

I’m going to do something I haven’t done since elementary school, maybe junior high at the latest.

It was around this time of year where we would get that customary writing assignment, the one you could theoretically create in the second grade and reuse every year if you expanded your vocabulary and made your sentences longer.

After a few years it got old, because even the overachievers had trouble finding new ways to say what they were thankful for in the annual Thanksgiving paper.

That was quite a build-up for a seemingly mundane topic, so without further ado, here we go.

I’m thankful you’ve made it this far into this column. Maybe, just maybe our generation contains enough readers to keep newspapers alive for as long as I’m employed, even if they’re not in print and just on the web.

I’m thankful for my family – my brother, my late father, whose hard work afforded me the opportunity to attend Baylor, and my mother. She did an incredible job raising my brother and me as a single parent since 2001.

She also did a damn good job of teaching my brother and me to not say bad words.

I’m thankful for my friends, many of whom have been incredibly gracious losers as I’ve mowed them down in this year’s fantasy football league. Two championships in three seasons? Sounds good to me.

Speaking of football, I’m thankful for the San Francisco 49ers, whose successful 8-1 record this season has proven more surprising than a hypothetical Kardashian wedding lasting more than an entire football season. Shocking.

I’m thankful that when I die, it won’t matter how far I’ve made it as a journalist or if the 49ers ever manage to win the Super Bowl. I have eternal life through Christ, and that’s the greatest gift I have ever and will ever receive.

I did get a nice gift from Baylor parking services recently, and I’m pretty thankful for it. It’s not often a car sits in a faculty spot at Castellaw Communications Center for more than 24 hours and escapes without a ticket or a tow.

I’m thankful for the 21 people that come to Castellaw every day and put together the Lariat. There are easier jobs on campus and around town that someone could do just for a paycheck.

But the Lariat staff kept coming back for every issue this semester. Poor judgement? Possibly. Devotion? You bet.

I could go on and on about what I’m thankful for, but I’ll spare everyone the boredom. I guess when you think about it, our “What I’m thankful for” lists mix a lot of big things with small touches that help make life bearable.

Look at the three F’s of Thanksgiving Day – family, food and football. They each mean different things at different times, but the important thing is many of us, especially at Baylor, are blessed to enjoy life much more than we struggle through it.

Chris Derrett is a senior journalism news-editorial major and is the Lariat’s editor in chief.