The Opinions Section

     It's about this time that the realization finally sets in that I won't have time for anything anymore. I have bartered my time for an education. This is the second week of school, and the first wave of assignments is beginning to form out in the deep. Sure, I've had a few piddling tasks to complete along the way, but the serious stuff is almost here.

     Probably the most interesting part of my school this year will be managing the people who write for me in Opinions. The Opinions section is almost always made up of the slightly odd people, people who have forsaken the approval of society for their beliefs, such as myself. The problem is that our beliefs usually clash with each other, which has great potential to get ugly. I set a few rules in place that will hopefully prevent most or all of these impassioned interactions. Most of it is pretty simple stuff, common sense things like "don't say something that you know will tick someone off," and "don't argue with anyone." I also said that articles should only be discussed with me, which will hopefully reduce the chances of a controversial topic coming up during meetings. The hardest thing will probably be holding my own tongue. It's never been a big problem in the past, but I seem to have gotten gutsier and a bit more confrontational over the course of the summer, especially about my opinions. Not that I'm complaining. It helps to have some backbone, but it wouldn't be very good management if I told my writers to behave and then started on one of my rants.

     Originally, I was going to tell my writers to put a lot of emphasis on supporting their ideas with logic and not just the power of the printing press, but I don't know if I can do that anymore, because it would be easy for me to find logical flaws in any opinion that disagreed with mine. Since I can't run the section that way, I'll have to let a lot of illogical things slide, which kind of irks me, but I can live with it. It will probably give me a lot of ideas for more articles. Anyway, that's the news for the moment.

     I'm getting sort of tired of saying "until next time" at the end of every post. I need a catchphrase. Oh well.