If I’m being honest, I have to admit that some issues of The Voice Magazine just aren’t as good as others. Sometimes, I find myself looking at the articles going into the magazine on a given week and thinking to myself, is this really going to interest AU students? Not that I think we’ve done a wholly bad issue yet, there’s always at least one article I get that I think to myself, “Okay, the students will be interested in this, that can be my feature article” but it can be tough.
Of course, now with regular student interviews and some new academic interviews, deciding on a feature each week hasn’t been a difficult thing. Now the problem is the reverse. Now when I get a second article that I really want to make sure students read, what do I do? Fortunately, there’s no rule that I can’t have two feature articles, so this week, that’s exactly what’s happened. Our first feature is the first part of the Meeting the Minds interview with Dr. Terry Anderson. If you don’t know, Dr. Anderson, along with Dr. Dron who we interviewed last time, are the two people most responsible for the development of the AU Landing, and hope to develop it into a catch-all social media platform for AU.
Our second feature this week is an article by our own Barb Godin. She has a knack for writing articles that grab at your heart and give it a twist. Her Letter to Mom this week is no exception. While most AU students probably don’t share the experience she’s sharing, I don’t often receive articles that I have to pause for a moment to think about once I’ve read them. This time I did, and I think you will too.
But our features aren’t the only good thing in this issue, we also have Barbara Lehtiniemi’s look at AU’s foray into Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Wanda Waterman continues her interview with the band The Highway which works in conjunction with Samantha Steven’s review of their upcoming album. And we have the return of Maxie Von Roye, who hasn’t written since before I became the editor here. Maxie’s article is one that I think pretty much any student will be able to relate to, I know I certainly can (and if you can’t, well, don’t gloat.) Plus we have the return of the Travelling Student as Philip writes about what inspires him to study as he approaches Las Vegas.
And I can’t forget the article by Deanna Roney this week. There’s a line in it that made my jaw drop, and forced me to reconsider if I’ve been too idealistic about how we’re evolving as a society. Fortunately, she takes the opposite lesson from it, and I hope that you will as well.
Finally, if you’re in Calgary, especially, I urge you to take a look at this weeks’ Career Path?which we’ve renamed “The Entrepreneur’s Path” to be more true to the direction it’s taken. Marie Well looks at becoming a restauranteur, and interviews one in Calgary who has been kind enough to offer up a discount to students mentioning the story. So even if running a restaurant isn’t what you’d like to do, I’m pretty sure all of us don’t mind eating at one from time to time.
So, bon appétit, and enjoy the read!
