The Gazelle is an independent, student-run, weekly publication that was founded in 2013 by two NYU Abu Dhabi alumni. If you are by any chance at the palms on Sunday afternoons, you might be surprised to see a group of people walking towards A4. This observation warrants the belief that the Gazelle is more of a cult.

The Gazelle, in essence, serves as a platform where staff-writers, editors, and other contributors can freely express themselves. Articles can touch up on an endless number of topics, whether it is documenting a fascinating J-term in Ghana, highlighting the student experience of someone from a low income background, or sharing the best boba tea place in Abu Dhabi.

As an independent publication and non student interest group, we operate editorially and financially separate from the university. This allows the team the space to produce authentic journalism. Rather than the entire NYUAD community, The Gazelle is a platform of individuals. Each person is free to have their own voice and share their own views in the newspaper.

The Gazelle is not just another extracurricular for your resume. This student newspaper harbors real effects on the NYUAD system and community. One piece alone can have a tremendous impact on your education; for instance [Kaashif Hajee] (https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/193/features/unthinking-eurocentrism-nyuad-decolonize-curriculum) amplified existing conversations about the decolonization of the NYUAD curriculum, leading to changes within core and social science courses. Arya Gautam provoked a much needed restructuring of STEM programs to allow for more flexibility. Moreover, Noora Jabir’s piece on wooden ship-building in Kerala drew the attention of CNN. With our work reaching a monthly average of 20,000 new and recurring readers, our voices are indeed heard.

From a professional standpoint, The Gazelle equips its members with the skills necessary to flourish in any field of the working world. Working together with fellow students throughout the week, and during long hours of production helps you find your dynamic in a team environment and ensures that you learn to respect not only the time and capacity of others, but your own as well.

The Features Desk is known to be efficient when it comes to communication, especially when it comes to interviewing faculty and community members. Columnists are required to be consistent with high quality thematic pieces, although writing about ways to be more sustainable on a weekly basis can be quite tedious. The News Desk is incredibly meticulous when it comes to fact-checking to protect authenticity and journalistic professionalism. The Opinion Desk publishes nuanced pieces about issues pertaining to our campus but also about the places we come from. In addition, the Communications team finds creative ways to promote the publication on social media, Multimedia comes through with beautiful and thought-provoking illustrations while the Copy team is our last defense against grammatical errors.

You will intentionally or unintentionally find yourself engaging with the entire NYUAD community through The Gazelle. More often than not, you will find yourself reaching outside of the campus bubble, seeing new faces, and sharing valuable stories.

With a new Video desk starting this semester, opportunities for students wanting to get involved have become even more diverse. Every staff writer, editor, and illustrator has something to offer aside from their roles in the production process. These are the people who will remind you time and time again to never self-censor on your first draft, always edit in suggestion mode, and whether or not the Oxford Comma is in our style guide. Although in all honesty, I could neither tell you what exactly an Oxford Comma is, nor how to use it.

You might be thinking that what I have just put forward is an entirely biased take on the publication, which is absolutely true. So far, I’ve been part of The Gazelle for one semester, which surely is not long enough to make someone passionately ramble about it in over 500 words. But it is long enough to come to the conclusion that The Gazelle is exactly what you and only you will make of it. Your commitment to any activity or hobby for that matter is completely personal, therefore what you put in is what you get out. I personally find fulfillment in the little things along the way, like the excitement of sharing my works, and being pleasantly surprised that sometimes my mother and my roommate aren't the only people that have read them. So, here's a proposition; If you have something to say and nowhere to say it, why don't you give The Gazelle a shot?