Hello dear Iron Warrior readers! Thanks for grabbing an issue of your friendly neighbourhood official Engineering Society Newspaper, The Iron Warrior (even if it’s mainly for the crossword). Hope you’re all well and ready for this summer term! Get ready for beautiful sunny days spent sitting in class, gorgeous weekends spent studying, and leisurely walks spent dodging geese poop and also the geese themselves.
Nina at your service, the brand-spanking-new Editor-in-Chief (EiC). I’m honoured to be in this position this term, and I’m grateful for everyone who’s helped me get involved in this along the way, ever since I first joined as a young Padawan in 1A. I’ve had a lot of fun with this in the past, and I’ve met so many fantastic people along the way. I can only hope to offer an equally good time this term, while continuing to output a sort of kick-ass newspaper.
This is the first issue, coming at the end of the first month of term (already, what the hell?). It’s been almost as exciting as it was stressful. I can credit much of my survival thus far to the wonderful IW staff (top notch people, all of you), and some über-resourceful previous EICs, specifically Alex Lee, Spenser Good, Lucas Hudson, and Jacob Terry. Thank you for putting up with all my e-mails, and I sincerely hope that you don’t mind or haven’t noticed my fake-it-’til-you-make-it attitude.
We’re always looking for new writers, photographers, and editors to join our team! If you want to get involved with us, participate in our many brainstorming conversations (they all somehow find their way to Game of Thrones though…), and munch on FREE FOOD, come to E2-2347! Meetings are every Tuesday at 5:30! We especially need FIRST YEARS. Y’all are super important if we want to keep this paper running in future years, so come on out 1B’ers! Anyone can contribute to our paper as well, just e-mail your articles to iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca, if you have something you want to publish!
Most of our regular columnists are back again to inform and entertain. These including Nancy Hui’s ever-amusing movie review column, “Take Five”, Alex Toth’s “Album of the Week”, and Elizabeth Salsberg’s sports column “The Benchwarmer Report.” You can find a lot of advice you should totally definitely use in your life in “How to Talk to…” and the new “Whether Report,” a weather-based horoscope where the temperatures are arbitrary and the advice even more so. Another new column to look out for is “The Oil Change,” for insightful reflection on the use and development of energy. Some previous IW staples have departed with the graduation of their writers however, and will be sorely missed in this term and in future terms. A parting salute to TOPZ, for example, their handsomeness no longer gracing the pages of this newspaper.
There’s been a lot going on (as usual), both at Waterloo and in the world, and this issue attempts to give some of the highlights. Our student design teams have been up to some amazing things, and now’s a pretty good time to get involved with one of them and have an amazing experience working hard with some of engineering’s brightest. Exciting updates from Waterloo Hybrid and the Concrete Canoe team can be found in this issue.
This issue’s world news takes a much darker turn though. From the 276 abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, to the 301 that perished in the Turkish mining disaster, and the those who had their lives washed away by flooding in the Balkans, there’s certainly no shortage of human suffering. No matter how much we’ve advanced since the appearance of our species, there will always be sobering reminders of our enduring vulnerability to both natural and man-made calamities, the latter of which we can only try to minimize over time.
There’s been a lot to handle transitioning into these new responsibilities, and therefore a lot to stress over. Everything from advertisers, to article management, to even food, and finally, the infamous production weekend. This weekend actually wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be, though I did waste an inordinate amount of time on Saturday planning and figuring things out. Furthermore, despite using the new computer (a monster of a machine), the dreaded blue screen still occurred three times, leading me to believe that our previous problems might not, in fact, have been the cause of an aged computer. Sunday was a lot better thanks to Krishna Iyer, layout-editing master, and having finally received the majority of articles. No blue-screening occurred that day. Not all of the gosh darn articles came in though, which I suppose is something I should plan for in future issues.
I’ll admit, the thought that perhaps I’ve bitten off more than I can chew has crossed my mind more times than there are articles in this issue. It’s been a pretty hectic few weeks, and it’s only going to get worse. I was repeatedly warned about the 3A Environmental term, but I guess I figured that if I cut out all my Redditing hours I could make room to manage a newspaper as well as complete all the numerous weekly lab reports and assignments. It’s actually sort of working so far, and I’ve only had one ‘late’ night, and it was only 3 am so it wasn’t that bad. Time management is definitely something that I’ll learn this term. Maybe it’ll even break my internet addiction and tendency to procrastinate. Thank goodness our class has access to a fourth year study lounge, as I couldn’t be doing this without the help of the lovely people always working there. Shout out to the 3A Enviro/Geo class for being such bomb-tastic human beings!
To be absolutely honest, my main goal this term is simply not to mess things up too much. I want to keep this thing going as it has been for so long. That being said, there’s a few improvements that I can think of addressing, depending on time constraints and whether or not I actually feel like it. This past term saw plenty of room improvements, where the furniture got upgraded, a new computer was assembled, and things were rearranged. It looks fantastic, and there isn’t really much to do there. My sights have turned on our website, which is starting to glitch a bit, for unknown reasons. If I can figure out what’s going on, I’ll fix it. Our current version of WordPress could use a bit of an upgrade as well, which is something I want to look into, although if it goes wrong it will go really, really wrong….
Aside from the actual successful running of the paper, I think my biggest fears lie in making potentially bad judgements. I find that a combination of an appreciation for stupid humour and an over-willingness to accommodate requests might result in some questionable decisions for what is appropriate for the paper. I genuinely hope that there won’t be any controversies or scandals during my term. As a writer, I myself have had some interesting moments over the past few years. Without going into too much detail, there was a certain politically-charged article in particular that was written in 1B (or was it 2A?) that sparked the ire of a university faculty member. The hour-long debate that followed was nerve-wracking, but a great learning experience on the power of language, especially how even the subtlest syntax choices might influence the overall tone and therefore the interpretation of the reader. I pride myself in my ability to write generally unbiased pieces when needed, and have tended to stay away from divisive topics. To be honest, I was mainly surprised that someone had read something that I wrote. There was another more heartening instance where I did a piece for my environmental column, “Leafy Thoughts” about feral cats and got some fairly positive external feedback (thank goodness), something I found very encouraging. I’ve since taken these experiences and have concluded that while I should not write about politics, I can definitely write about cute animals. Or more seriously, that potentially controversial articles (i.e. ones about politics, or social issues) should be expected to ignite disagreements and interesting discussion, and that it’s something to keep in mind when publishing. I think that it’s not always a bad thing, though. Short of blatantly offensive content, I believe that any well-researched opinions supported with valid logic and sound arguments are worthy of publication, even for the sake of discussion and debate.
All in all, I’m really excited to be the EIC this Spring 2014 term, and will do all that I can to make this a good one!
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