I like the fiction feature this week. It can be read as a cute little story that’s just a fun read, but if you look a little closer it has something more to say about the power of personal suggestion. Or maybe magic. You decide.
With no student interview this week, I’m happy to also be featuring the latest installment of [blue rare], something about the ending of it just strikes home. And the third feature is a look at migraines. This one may be a bit self-indulgent, as I have some familiarity with migraines, and so I found myself agreeing with it a lot.
And while we still have most of our regular columnists with no music review, and no minds we meet, this issue is turning out to be a little shorter than usual. Fortunately, some students have answered the call for new writers, and I think we may even meet one next week, so no fear, as we enter September, we should have a fuller Voice Magazine for the new cohort.
However, in addition to writers, we’re also looking for people who would be willing to share a bit of themselves with other students, promote the AU community, and maybe pick up a little bit of swag as well. If that sounds like it could be you, contact mwm@voicemagazine.org for more details.
Meanwhile, as we close out the summer months, the news has been consumed with the ongoing arrests down in the United States of Mr. Trump and the various hangers on around him for their activities during the election. What confuses me the most about this is that, from what I understand, Mr. Trump still remains one of the front runners for the leadership of the Republican Party. Even if you’re a person who believes Mr. Trump is wholly innocent of the charges against him, I can’t understand how you might believe that enough of independent America would support him through this that it gives the party a chance at the presidency. But then again, if you’re immersed in the social media bubble, as I think you pretty much have to be to continue to believe in Mr. Trump’s innocence, then you probably have a deep distrust for any media that is reporting things that don’t already agree with you.
Here in Alberta, while there’s little news on the post-secondary front, Mr. Nicolaides is back in the news as the new mandate letter for the Ministry of Education has been released. Notably among this is a mandate to create classes to help develop life skills and financial literacy at the high school level. And honestly, this strikes me as one of the better ideas this government has presented on education. The devil is in the details, of course, but if we could start students off with some basic survival skills, like how to fill out your taxes—whether as an employee or self-employed—strikes as something that would help a lot of students. For myself, when I first graduated, I had no idea how to cook much of anything that didn’t have instructions, which means food that, in general, isn’t very healthy. Also, how to critically evaluate information that we find strikes me as a skill that we, as a general populace, sorely need. These days, I feel it would be useful to teach high-school students some advanced research skills, even if they don’t plan to go on to higher education.
After all, if you know how to properly research, then you’re far less likely to just accept what you see on social media as a truth. And that could help all of us.
At any rate, enjoy the read!
