Welcome to the last issue of The Voice Magazine for 2019. We’re off on holidays next week, and the week after that we reveal our “Best of” 2019. So if there’s an article from the last year that you really thought deserves more love, now would be the time to send it to me at karl@voicemagazine.org.
We close out the year with our feature interview being with a student from Red Deer, Alberta, who looked at her life as a cashier at Subway and felt there must be something more, but to attain it, she needed AU. Be sure to check out Rebecca Snider’s story in this week’s “Minds We Meet”.
Also this week, Wanda Waterman is inspired by Christmas to take a look at how political correctness is running amok, and in its quest to avoid giving offence, is creating a new class of offensive words. While I agree with the premise, I tend to argue the opposite, that while perfectly good words are being ruined and made offensive, this isn’t through political correctness, but rather through humans being, well, human. If we, as a group, tend to view others as “less than”, then it doesn’t matter what words we use to describe them. Even with the best of intentions, those words will come to represent “less than”. The problem, to me, lies in us spoiling the words, not in the attempt to not use spoiled words.
And it’s not something many of us like to think about it, but the Christmas season often brings echoes of a loss in the family, if there’s been one. So in this last issue of the year, Barbara Lehtiniemi returns with an article about what you can do to deal with, or help someone deal with, those echoes when they loom large around the Christmas tree.
If that isn’t enough, we also have the Council Connection report from November’s meeting, the one that started the bylaw review you may have seen me writing about or posted on Facebook. What’s going on and what bylaws are being changed? We fill you in on that, as well as what went on during the very short meeting in December that just passed.
And of course, we can’t have a final issue without our plethora of regular allotments of advice, events (and closures this time), scholarships, and more, including a look back at some articles on Christmas Classics run in the Voice Magazine in previous years.
Most important, however, I want to thank all of you who’ve been reading and especially those of you who’ve taken the time to contribute to or comment on what you’ve read in The Voice Magazine. We’re a bit different from your standard university paper, and being all online, it’s tough sometimes to see if you’re connecting with people.
But every once in a while we hear from someone who found something we did useful, like a Course Exam or Struggling Student Rant, or insightful, like a Dear Barb or a Study Dude, or just simply a good read, like the Porkpie Hat or our student interviews. And I occasionally hear from one of our interviewees how they appreciated the opportunity to share and to see other’s sharing, as it makes it all feel like we’re not quite so alone in our educations, and to me, there’s no higher praise that can be given to The Voice Magazine. So, until next year, enjoy the read!
