Thursday, May 12, 2011
As my sentence with this newspaper comes to a close, I've found myself reflecting on just how I ended up here in the first place.
Back in 2008, I was convicted of helping my evil twin, Fernando, sell a batch of endangered panda lungs to a black market organ dealer. Since all I did was take the box of panda lungs to FedEx (Fernando had told me the package was a collection of Beanie Babies he had sold on eBay), I got off easy. The judge ordered that I do three years of community service. After explaining to the judge that I couldn't perform manual labor due to my chronic not-wanting-to, he instead instructed that I do something to help the sick, the infirm, the near-death. So, I decided to volunteer in the field of print journalism.
The only problem with this plan was that I was wholly unqualified to be a journalist. I couldn't be a reporter, because they have to go out and interview people and do research, and the thought of that makes my not-wanting-to flare up. And I couldn't be an editor, because they have to do whatever it is editors do, which is probably a lot. I needed something that would allow me to make stuff up and pass it off as “opinion.” Something that wouldn't require any qualifications whatsoever. And so, after laboriously searching through the want ads, I finally found the perfect job: opinion columnist for the University Daily Kansan.
The editors at the time were impressed with my passion for misinformation and my ability to write 500 words without fainting, so they hired me right away. At first they were baffled by my insistence that I be unpaid, but then they liked not paying me so much that they extended the policy to the rest of the opinion staff. (Sorry, guys!)
That first semester was rough. I was writing simply to fulfill my requirement, and as a result the work suffered. For example, I wrote a scathing piece about some dumb Facebook movie that Aaron Sorkin was writing at the time. (The movie turned out to be pretty okay.) I wrote a few other columns about stuff nobody really cared about. Things were bleak, but I stuck with it.
As I continued to write, I started becoming more passionate about it. It was no longer just about the court order. It was about the people. Folks started to recognize me on campus, with praise ranging from “You write for the newspaper?” to “Okay, I get it, you write for the newspaper. Now leave me alone.”
And now, in writing my last column, I realize that FedExing those panda lungs was the best thing I ever did. The highs and lows of writing for this page made for a truly enriching experience. If you have a passion for writing (or a few hundred hours of community service to do), you should definitely apply. Just be prepared to hate that one sixth of the page is wasted on a collection of crappy Facebook statuses. And get ready to receive only the most inane/insane comments on the online versions of your columns. Don't worry, though – the fun you have in the process will make up for it.
Goodbye, University Daily Kansan. You were worth every lung.
— Nichols is a senior from Stilwell in creative writing.
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