Questions are my job as your new editor

By Jonathan Pechon
Editor

There are people who would
have you believe that
questions are not good things.

Questions cause problems. Questions make people do work. Questions upset people, or confuse them. Questions lead to wrong answers. Questions just lead to more questions. Questions, in short, are hard.

And questions are my job.

I am happy to be at North Lake College and to work as the newest editor of the News-Register. The challenge of writing regularly is not one to be taken lightly, no matter how much I enjoy it, or how rewarding it can be.

Personally, I am a fiercely competitive person. Whether it is in the multitude of games that I indulge in or in the completion of tasks such as schoolwork, I have to push myself to attempt to succeed. I’ve only recently learned to apply this to more practical parts of my life; schoolwork has not always been a strong point for me.

I look forward to the challenge of finding new questions to ask. I want to find the kinds of questions that will not only make you as the reader think, but also the administration and faculty of the college. To present issues that are not only interesting, but give some light to the difficulty inherent in running an institution of this size.

During the period in my life where working on computers was my passion, I spent a lot of time asking questions: Did you install the software? When did it stop working? Is it plugged in? Dear god, what have you done to it?

While the questions are different here, they come in the same abundance: Is the cafeteria being remodeled? What’s going on with the old library? Will we be getting more computers in the Resource Center?

It is not my job to report only what is popular, be it the fact that there are currently plans to convert the old library into a student life center. It isn’t my job to simply act as a doombringer, though I can say there are no current plans to add any computers to the Resource Center. And I am not just a fact-finder, informing you that there aren’t any plans to remodel the cafeteria. The awning has been removed because of damage it has sustained over time from weather; it will be replaced within a week.

The work my staff writers and I do combines all of these aspects and more. The challenge is taking all of this, choosing the most relevant issues, and putting my efforts into finding out what I can about them. And the strongest way to do this is to hear these questions from the students and faculty.

Currently, there are nearly 8,000 students enrolled at North Lake College, up 6.6 percent from last spring. Our doors at the News Register in A-260 are open to each one of you, and to the issues that you can bring to us. I want our resources and information to grow with the rest of the campus, be it news sources or new writers.

Or simply new questions.