Hello there, fellow human (or whatever you are). Thanks for picking up the last issue of the Iron Warrior in Spring 2014!
Exams are coming up, good luck studying for them. Please try to eat and sleep meanwhile.
You can always distract yourself by doing the crossword. Hope you’re successful in completing at least the easy Sudoku puzzle (if you can’t, blame the puzzle generator, it seems to overestimate our abilities).
This term’s gone by fairly quickly. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything remotely interesting these past four months, but at least I’ve got newspapers to keep me warm. Aside: a classic hobo trick for keeping warm outdoors (especially when sleeping) is stuffing your clothing with crumpled newspaper.
I want to thank anyone and everyone who contributed and helped out with the paper this term, because things wouldn’t have gone remotely smoothly without you. Special thanks to the fantastic staff who help to write, edit, and lay out the paper every issue. As always, acknowledgements need to go to Alex Lee and Nancy Hui for coming in every production weekend. Also joining us on production weekends is Jessica Keung, inquirer extraordinaire who writes hilarious articles, and who will sadly be going off term now. You will be missed.
Thanks to our copy editors, including Elizabeth Salsberg who always writes several articles as well as directing distribution every other Tuesday. Badass. Props to Nachiket Sherlekar, who is probably the first person in a while to come and learn layout (but who will unfortunately go off term). Krishna Iyer, you’ve got a potential successor now so you don’t have to worry about being a sketchy grad (you should still drop by though, even if only to play us some Action Bronson).
This term had a lovely influx of more investigative journalism pertaining to the university, thanks to Matt McLean who somehow always knew who to talk to in order to get detailed information. Very impressive indeed. Shout out also to Sung Eun Kim, a Masters student who finds time to volunteer for several articles per issue.
They’ve started playing the elevator music now and that means this speech must be accelerated, so thanks to Alex Toth for always consistently submitting articles in good time, to Meagan Cardno for accepting random articles and for her Game of Thrones rants, and to Brian Chan for his tips on how to live that I will fail at following. /end speech
Moving on… for those of you who’ll be around for the Fall term, you’re in fantastic hands with incoming Editor-in-Chief Leah Kristufek, who’s also helped out so much this term. She’s sure to run this show a hell of a lot better than I did. Heading into Winter term, the EIC will be Nancy Hui, for what I feel are obvious reasons. Just read the paper sometime, Nancy dominates this thing. It’ll be pretty bomb.
As for my thoughts on my own performance this term, I feel comfortable saying that it went fairly well, and I didn’t colossally mess up. I finished up the switch into the new work station by doing the final set-up stuff. We can now work pretty much work exclusively off of the new monster computer. An attempt was made to upgrade WordPress but the password didn’t work, for unknown reasons. Will attempt again later. Also the website seemed to need some tweaking, but man oh man did it prove to be a bigger job than originally expected. As of right now, our website looks super weird though I can’t fathom what’s gone wrong. It’s just done interesting things without any of us having done anything. I hope to properly have a look at it after exams. Maybe I’ll fix something. No scandals occurred this term, and our budget looks pretty darn good for a summer term. Exciting stuff, that is.
There are many “goals” and objectives that I hope to help with in future terms. We still haven’t gotten those new racks put up (ex. in E5), and it’s been like two years now… we’ll see how this plays out. I also hope to see a door code system finally implemented, or at the very least the creation of some new keys for this room. It’s a miracle I didn’t lose the only copy (knock on wood). As mentioned above, the website needs major upgrades. I think that a dedicated web designer needs to focus on it for a bit in order to either fix the current problems, or revamp it entirely. The room needs to also be cleaned up, and I plan on doing so in the days after my exams. Major organizing and trash-tossing is in store.
We’re also in dire need of new members. Hoping to snag some first-years this fall. This is thanks to the Bi-Socsual nature of the Nanos who make up so much of our staff. Dammit guys. Everybody’s leaving on an 8-month co-op. For anyone interested in writing, editing, taking photos, drawings comics, ANYTHING, we’d love to see you, so come out next term!
This has really been quite the term. Definitely the busiest academically, even without the paper going on. A lot was learned in terms of life skills. A lot to say to interviewers, really. Guess I can say the pain was worth it.
So here they are: lessons learned from being EIC (hopefully you can find them transferable).
The big thing (covered previously) is that time is really tight when you have multiple things to contend with. School by itself is supposed to take up nearly all of our time. Should you choose to take on other responsibilities, some sacrifices will have to be made. The sad truth is that many social gatherings, be it going out Friday night or even joining an intramural sports team, will be nearly impossible to fit in whilst still fulfilling all responsibilities. Among these are those nights that you decide to “take off”. Maybe you don’t have something due the next day for once and you think it’s okay to watch a movie or colour in a colouring book. I can guarantee that that’ll come back to bite you in the ass. Structure your time and try to stick to a schedule.
A strangely lucky thing is that once you reach this level of business, you’ll automatically be more productive when doing tasks. I thought I had the worst procrastination problem coming into this term, but I can honestly say that I’ve wasted much less time knowing how much needs to be done. That being said, if you’re still prone to time-wasting, figure out why. Why do you feel the compulsion to avoid work? If you’ve talked yourself into believing that you’ll be fine putting things off, you must stand up to yourself and start trying to let logic take over. What’s the point in waiting? After a time, you’ll eventually enjoy putting the work in, and will be able to treat every task done ahead of time as a victory. Sweet, sweet victory.
Another few skills picked up this term include leadership and management. This isn’t my strongest of suits as I’ve grown up to be the biggest pushover, despite having been much better at younger ages. In this case I still have a long ways to go, but I’ve learned that if you’re not assertive, shit won’t get done. Pester people (not too much though!). Voluntell people to do things. Don’t be afraid to boss up. You got this. You have shit to oversee, and goals to achieve. If politeness doesn’t do it, switch gears. Make eye contact. Ask specific people to do things, rather than asking the whole room. The bystander effect is real, and it totally happens in meetings as well. You know that awkward moment in class when the prof asks a questions and nobody says anything? Yeah. You understand really quickly why they then decide to just pick on people.
That being said, courtesy and respect goes a really long way, so never ever treat the people you’re working with like they’re inferior in some way. Don’t be an asshole. Find a balance.
Well then, that’s it for me. There’s so much that I’d wish I’d done, but so much that I feel I’ve accomplished. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this happen. Good luck on your exams, see you next term (Leafy Thoughts might be coming back)!
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