One of the things that I knew I wanted to do when I took over The Voice Magazine was to try to make it more relevant to you, to us, the AU students. Of course, that’s not a terribly easy task because we’re such a diverse group. From people just getting out of high school who’ve decided they’re fed up with restrictions and fixed timelines constraining when they can learn, to active parents and business people who are simply too busy to be able to attend a regular university, to the massive bulk of AU students, those who are here because they need to pick up that one extra course for their degree program and their own school isn’t offering it in a way that they could take it. Publishing articles that are relevant to every AU student simply isn’t an easy task.

But we’re trying. With more articles giving studying and motivation advice, more stories about post-secondary matters, and interviews with both students and tutors, I’m trying to make sure that The Voice Magazine at least touches on something each week that any student can find useful for interesting. Yet, for me, it hasn’t been enough.

This issue brings us a little closer to that goal, though, as I’m using it to start two new features which I hope will be regular ones. The first is a smaller section called Student Sizzle, where we report on some of the busier AU related topics that are going on across the various forms of social media where students reside. If You’re too busy for Facebook, can’t be bothered to Twitter, and not sure what happens on the AUSU forums, this little sidebar is something that’ll help you decide if you want to get involved yourself, or if you don’t, to make sure that you won’t miss anything important.

The second feature is from a new writer, Philip Kirkbride, who has taken on the ambitious plan of travelling half way around the globe while still taking an AU degree. How well it will work, even he doesn’t know yet, but we’ll be able to vicariously take the journey with him through a new set of articles called The Travelling Student.

Another thing that is going to help make The Voice Magazine more relevant is our audience survey is now open, and will remain so until Thursday, October 16th. If you haven’t filed it out already, you can do so at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HTGP56Z and, at the same time, get your entry into the contest to win either an 8.4″ Samsung Galaxy Tab S, 16GB version?something great for taking your e-texts on the go?or one of five Voice merchandise packages. More importantly, you’ll be helping me decide what kind of articles I need to focus on finding and publishing to make sure that The Voice is giving you what you want from your student magazine.

I’m happy to report that we’ve had a decent response rate so far, already dwarfing the results of our last survey, but I still want more, so if you know of any AU students that haven’t filled it out yet, ask them why not and send them over. After all, You’re paying for this anyway, right? You should make sure You’re getting your money’s worth!

Enjoy the read!