A SENIOR

TRANSVESTIA?

NEW

Signs of the Times

As has been pointed out at various times in the past, TRANSVESTIA is like a college. People wanting and needing an education come in as Freshmen-empty, eager, capable and with undeveloped understanding and potential. They stay through their Sophomore, Junior and Senior years being filled, satisfied, developed and given some understanding and wisdom. After four years they graduate, they leave the college and only maintain future connections with it on Alumni Day. The total enrollment of the college doesn't effectively change because as new needful individuals come in at the bottom, the older, fulfilled ones go out at the top. Or to put it with another analogy, a busy restaurant has just so many tables. It is filled to capacity all the time. Hungry people come in, satisfied customers go out.

Thus with TVia. New readers, (they may be old hands at TV but in the lonely, isolated, guilt ridden sense) find the magazine, subscribe for a period of years, learn, grow, make friends, achieve understanding and cease subscribing. This is understandable but it keeps the subscription lists of TVia roughly the same size over a number of years.

It has for sometime seemed to me that one of the reasons that old subscribers drop away is that after "graduating" as "seniors" they find a lot of what is taught to freshmen boring. They've heard it before they don't need it any more. The college has the obligation, however, to take in new people all the time and help them through the course. For this reason it keeps freshman and sophomore classes going all the time. So does this magazine and it has to to serve its primary purpose to help people acquire the knowledge, understanding and self acceptance that will yield peace of mind.

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