Mollee Ryan looks forward to a new year with new challenges for The Cauldron
BY MOLLEE RYAN, Freshman Music Therapy major, Opinion Editor
The fall semester of this school year is over, and it’s time for a new beginning. 2019 brings a new year, a fresh start, and a chance to forget all of the bad memories. Leave it in 2018. I’ve been writing for a newspaper since my sophomore year of high school. It wasn’t until my junior year that I felt so passionate about my writing that I decided it might be something I would like to consider as a career.
There was a time where nothing went through my head but creative ideas for my next story or what huge conspiracy I could expose. But come my senior year, that all changed. I had felt like I hit a wall. All of my creativity that had flowed ever so naturally just a year prior had left my head, unfound and nowhere to be seen.
I no longer had an intense passion for writing, and I found it extremely difficult to put words on paper, which was strange; I had always been the type of person to communicate my thoughts through expressions on paper rather than face-to-face conversations.
Halfway through my senior year, after committing to Cleveland State, I decided to change my major from journalism to anything else. I had no idea what I would rather do, I just knew that no matter how hard I tried, I had hit something, some kind of stone hard brick wall that prevented my previous astounding writing abilities.
Although I had almost completely taken a break from writing throughout the end of my senior year and the summer, I was still eager to start a new chapter of my life and hopefully get the opportunity to write for the newspaper at Cleveland State. When the first issue of the Cauldron came out, I was excited to read through it and find the contact information for the editor. Once I did, I immediately emailed the email listed and waited for a response. And with that awaited response, I had been offered a position as the Opinion Editor for The Cauldron.
In high school, I hadn’t written anything else other than sports. I did an opinion piece here and there, but it wasn’t something I regularly wrote. When I was offered the position for Opinion Editor, I was scared. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to meet the high expectations or keep up with all of the hard work put into every single issue. Nevertheless, I pushed ahead. Last semester, my first semester as the Opinion Editor, went a lot smoother than I ever expected it to. Surprisingly, yet to my delight, I never ran out of ideas or things to say.
That dreaded writer’s block that I had been feeling for the past two years was finally gone and I was able to write like I used to. Yet, something still felt missing. I still am a freshman, and I’m still trying to learn the ethics of everything in the journalism world, but this past semester something was missing and I couldn’t figure out what. As I said, my job was made pretty easy for me and everything was running smoothly, the only issue I ever ran into was not finding enough writers; what was the problem? So, I took this past winter break to do some “soul-searching” and talked to my professor about what I was feeling.
And with that, I set some new goals for this semester. Last semester was like a trial run for me. It was my first semester of college, so not only was I new to the newspaper, I was also living in a brand new environment. Now that I have some experience and have had a chance to figure out myself. This semester, I would like to redefine this section.
First, I want this section to have strong opinions. Whether they be left opinions or right opinions, I am looking for strong opinions. So many people now have strong opinions but are too afraid to share them or have no means of sharing them. This section, as the Opinion section, needs strong opinions, not unstable wishy-washy ones.
Second, I want this section to have a structure. And to have a structure, I mean that I would like to tackle issues on campus and off-campus that people don’t really like to talk about. I want this section to be strongly informative and to start conversations and debates. An Opinion section should provoke thought.
Finally, building off of what I said before, I would like to this section to be informative. I want daring opinions, but without factual information to support your statement, your argument is weak and frail. Although I want this section to be bold and courageous, it needs to stay factual and organized. I will be putting even more of my time than last semester into this position this semester.
It is a new beginning, a fresh start. If you have any ideas, or things you would like to see in this section this upcoming semester, shoot us an email at cauldroneditors@gmail.com.
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