It’s the time of term where people start to step a bit quicker and the durations of conversations dwindle.
Just one twinkle wrests this campus from black-hearted despair. For the people of Dartmouth College — intelligent as they are — know that while two can be chalked up as a coincidence, three makes a pattern. After muddling through three unintelligible Editor’s Notes, only the most optimistic of readers would dare predict anything other than another 2.6 terms of shockingly uninteresting drivel. Thus no matter how crummy their midterm papers are going, my readers fairly reason, it is unlikely their writing could possibly turn out as vacuous as the weekly Editor’s Note. My column, I can safely say, is responsible for a campus-wide writing confidence boost more palpable than that from attending an extra office hours or RWIT session.
“To which subject will Charlie turn his unsharpened ‘thinking’ this week?” my readers mutter as they stream into lecture halls. “Will this week’s column be as devoid of interest or substance as previous weeks’?”
(As an addendum, they might further wonder how many Editor’s Notes will be turned to the subject of the Editor’s Note — a subject that might fairly be considered “miles below the bottom of barrel.”)
The weekly Friday morning ritual of reading this Note, relishing your deep-seated revulsion and then ripping this column to shreds gleefully comes highly recommended.
Having filibustered away about two-thirds of the column, I’ll briefly mention this week’s theme before bowing out of your lives for six days — a period that I’m certain you cherish yet more each week. This Mirror approaches some of the overlooked stories tangled around the topic of climate change. There are some gems here, from a discussion of the politics of climate denial to a feature on a student building permaculture oases.
My column, I know, induces existential stress about the fate of writing in the 21st Century. But I feel confident that the rest of the issue will ease your concerns.
