Dear Readers,
Welcome back to school, and thanks for reading the first issue of the Fall 2013 Iron Warrior. I’m Alex Lee, and I will be your Editor-in-Chief (EIC) for the fall term. I’d like to thank all the hardworking staff and writers that write for The Iron Warrior, who put a lot of time and effort in this weekend to make sure everything was edited at least twice, and for helping with layout. I’d especially like to thank Jacob Terry and Farzi Yusufali, previous EICs who provided me a lot of help and passed their knowledge onto me.
We have several new or returning columnists. this term. Alex Toth is a 3B ChemEng who will be doing a music “Album Review” column. Myles Tan will be writing a column titled “Five Places you need to Know’, listing interesting places in Waterloo. This will be especially helpful for first years looking for places to eat or hang out. Elizabeth Salsberg will be taking on an additional column on top of her sports-oriented “Benchwarmer Report”, called “The Networking Engineer,” which is about, you guessed it, networking. And Meagan Cardno will be writing a new column called “The World in a Nutshell” which will focus on informing people on the nuances and facts of notable events. As an example, this first issue will be about the Syrian civil war.
I have a few important things to inform you of before we get into the meat of the article. First of all, our publishing schedule has been changed around a bit. Previously, we were publishing issues on September 18, October 2 and 23, and November 6 and 20, but now we are publishing on September 25 (this issue), October 9 and 30, and November 13 and 27. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is that it gave us barely any time to work on the first issue; if we had to publish on September 18, it would be much less polished than this. The second reason is that we would be working on the paper both on Thanksgiving weekend and right before Hell Week.
However, this created another issue. EngSoc had planned their election schedule around publication, and now there would not be an issue during the campaign season for the candidates to put their platforms in. As a result, this term, and this term only, we will be holding a special election issue!! This 4-page issue will have none of the usual news or crosswords, and instead will only be a vehicle for the candidates to get their messages and platforms out. Now I know how much you guys love the crosswords, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to pick this issue up! It is said that a government is only as strong as the people who participate in it. EngSoc speaks for all engineering students, including you, dear reader. However, representation requires participation, and the most basic form of participation is to vote. The election issue will hit the stands next week on October 2.
Finally, we are recruiting! If you are interested in writing, doing layout, etc. for The Iron Warrior, especially if you’re a first-year, please please please drop by the office. As some of our staff graduates every year, we are always looking for fresh blood to join our ranks. So if you want to work with us, or even if you haven’t made up your mind but are interested, come to our next meeting! We hold weekly meetings every Tuesday at 6:30 in our office, located at E2-2347.
Well, I’m glad that’s out of the way. Being EIC is a pretty large time commitment, and entails quite a bit of responsibility. I have just finished my first production weekend as EIC, and I was here for roughly ten hours on Saturday and Sunday, as well as for five hours on Friday. I spent the last two weeks desperately trying to gather enough ads to balance the budget, and was only just able to do it. It seems one of my unofficial duties is to harass people until they finally send me in the articles they promised me by 6 on Friday (I’m just kidding I love you guys…but please try to send them in earlier.) Whenever I have free time between labs and classes, I’m usually in the office. Now, I have nothing against the office. It’s a pretty nice office. It’s got some nice chairs and the main computer has 2 pretty large monitors. However, I still spent the last 2 weeks practically living in the office waiting for ads to come in.
All of this, on top of my course load, is a lot of work, to put it lightly. So why did I take on this enormous responsibility? Well, the first reason is that I probably wasn’t thinking straight when I accepted. But I think the deeper reason was that I wanted to challenge myself. I personally found myself stagnating during my first year of university. I didn’t really do too much, and I found myself uninterested in school or really too much of anything. I felt a little like I was just going through the motions of life. It got hard to even focus in class. I realized that the reason I had ended up that way was that I had not been challenging myself. I had been avoiding trying new things, and I was sticking to the comfortable and familiar. As a result, I was losing energy and motivation to do much of anything.
I’m trying to make this term different. This term I feel reinvigorated, partially due to the excitement of taking on the mantle of EIC. I feel motivated for class, and I really want to do well this term. I’ve been reorganizing my life, cutting out a lot of wasted time. There’s a long way to go, but for the first time in a while, I feel alive.
This got me thinking about the importance of change in life. It always feels comforting to stick to the familiar, because it’s predictable and you know you can do it. Often change and challenge feel scary, because there is uncertainty involved with it, and there is always a chance of failiure. I don’t know if our fear of challenge stems from a prehistoric survival instinct, or if it is because of natural laziness, but what I do know is that many people ARE scared to challenge themselves.
But on the other side of the spectrum, change is what prevents life from becoming boring. As I experienced, going through the same things over and over again, clinging to the familiar, becomes boring and stagnant. It is in change and challenge that we improve ourselves as humans, and there is a certain satisfaction and personal reward that comes from successfully overcoming them. In fact, we need to change to improve our lives. It’s easy to fall into the trap of sticking with what you know, as I explained above. But we need to constantly remind ourselves to look for challenges, because that’s the only way to improve, and to truly live life.
I once watched a VSauce YouTube video that I don’t quite remember the main topic of. What I do remember is that near the end of the video, the topic of time perception was being discussed, and a hypothesis was brought forth that perhaps the reason time seems to go by faster as we get older is because that when we’re younger, everything in life is new to us, and so every day meant change and a new adventure. As we get older, we start falling into routines and because we’ve seen it all before, time seems to go by faster as our brains take less time to analyze the new material. This was a hypothesis, but if it is true, it only cements the fact that to get the most out of life, we need to accept change when it happens or is offered to us, and maybe even to actively seek it out.
So, long editorial short, change is what makes life enjoyable, because we as humans want to experience new things. However, we have a tendency to settle in routines because they’re safe and comforting, and there’s little chance of failure. We need to try to avoid settling into routines for too long or else life will start to feel boring and stagnant. So next time you feel like you feel like life is becoming too predictable, get off your arse and go do something totally new, as that will probably make your life exciting again. That’s all I’ve got for this issue, so until next time, thanks for reading The Iron Warrior and try to challenge yourself this week (and every week!)
Leave a Reply