Writing editorials for Ka Leo O Hawai`i

By January 1998, I had established Hawaii residency and was ready to return to the University of Hawai`i -- this time with the in-state tuition rate.

I also started working as an editorials writer for the student newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawai`i. It allowed me to vent some of my frustrations in a productive manner, and the extra $20 or so was never unwelcome.

By the end of the term, the section editor was ready to move on, and asked if I'd be interested in being the position. It was full-time work for part-time pay, but I'd be responsible for filling two pages, five days a week. I accepted.

Between May 1998 and May 1999, I wrote about 220 or so editorials, on top of all the weekly columns I'd done. I'm posting these in summer 2019, a full twenty years later. Looking back, some of my opinions have changed; others haven't. In either case, it's fun to look back at how I thought.

Not everything is particularly good -- a lot was done under the pressure of the daily weekday deadlines. Regardless, I'm proud of the work I did.

It was a time in my life when I was committed to a stressful task, and I got the job done. Though I left the job soon after graduation, the joy I got from reasoning through issues to form opinions on current events would stay with me ever since. (This blog is proof of that.)

And the confidence I gained in my ability to write enabled me to (much later) author Mechanics of Company Command in 2016.