If you look directly to your left, you will see The Poly staff box is quite full. We are not in danger of losing an irrecoverable amount of staff anytime soon; The Poly will survive. If you look a little closer at the issue, however, you will see that there are sections of the paper that are sparsely manned. Now, before you run away screaming "Oh no, a recruitment notebook, I don’t have time to work on The Poly," let me begin by saying that you determine your own commitment level to the paper. No one will push you into being the editor of a section or staying until 4 am Wednesday morning to close the paper. You are not required to write about every show at Mother’s or every Senate meeting. If you want to do these things, however, you are more than welcome to. The title of coordinator or editor carries with it certain responsibilities, I grant you that. You are responsible for a significant part of the newspaper, and that must be taken seriously. If you are only interested in or only have time for a few hours of commitment a week, however, there are more than enough things you can do to improve the quality of the paper.
Other concerns you may have are that you do not know anything about putting together a newspaper, and, since you attend RPI, your writing skills are not exactly your strong suit. Well, do not worry there, either. As long as you have the interest, we can teach you how to do anything you want. Many of us did not come to RPI as the capable journalists we are today—we learned over time how to put together a quality newspaper. There are many people on staff that will be willing to work with anyone on their writing style, layout abilities, or reporting technique.
Now that I’ve attempted to quell your fears about joining The Poly, I’d like to appeal to anyone interested in specific areas of paper. And, since I am the copy editor, I will start by appealing to anyone interested in proofreading. Reading copy involves looking for spelling and grammar errors (nothing too complicated), libel, and adjusting writing to fit Poly style. It also involves pizza breaks, reading the comics and Dave Barry long before anyone else, usurping the Poly couch, and discussing how professional writers for the Associated Press can still forget to put a period at the end of a sentence.
If copy reading isn’t your thing, maybe covering sports is. If you regularly attend games anyway, perhaps you’d be interested in taking a few notes during the game and talking to the players and coach afterward. Many sports teams on campus are not given the attention they deserve because we simply do not have the writers to go to all the games. If you participate in a sport, you may also be interested in writing about each one of your games or meets, and thereby making your own team’s accomplishments more well-known on campus. It doesn’t take that much time to write one article a week, especially if you have a vested interest in it.
If you don’t like copy or sports, there are still ways you can join The Poly and have fun. Writing a features article about on-campus events (or concerts, movies, CDs, games, etc.) is a good way to inform the rest of campus about shows that they may not realize exist. You may also write your own opinion/observation piece weekly or bi-weekly, if you are so inclined. Perhaps you are more interested in investigative reporting and wish to join the news department, or want to join EdOp to be able to harass the administration and student government officials into turning in their articles on time. Or maybe you hate writing, but still want to be involved—there’s always the photo department. If none of this interests you either, have no fear, there is still the composing department, which is responsible for all the layout and general Poly style, and systems—which requires only maintenance of our computers.
In addition to everything I said above, there is one more reason to join the paper. The parody issue. No, just kidding, I meant friendship. The Poly is a great place to meet fun, interesting people, who quickly become some of your closest friends. I know I am biased and it sounds corny, but it is true, you will leave the paper with friends for life. And, on the way, you will make many memories that will enrich your time spent here at RPI.
