Four years ago, a friend approached me and asked me if I would like to write for our school newspaper, The Furman Paladin. If she had asked any other person, their first response would have probably been to duck and run – and understandably so. After all, isn’t it bad enough that we have to write x192038019 papers for the classes we take at Furman? Who would actually want to write for leisure in their spare time?
Well, me, for one. And now I’m going to try and encourage you to do the very same thing, should someone come up to you your freshman year and ask you to join the newspaper.
Depending on which section you are writing for, most of the time you really only have to write 600 words per article. That is really pretty much all of one page. If Furman is good at training their students to do anything, it would most definitely be writing long and lengthy papers on really just about anything. In fact, I recall writing a 10 page paper on the topic of chocolate, of all things. But anyway the point is, if you can write long papers for class, you can most certainly write a one to two page article for the newspaper!
By far though, my favorite thing about the newspaper is the Horse issue. What is the Horse, you ask? The Horse is the annual April Fools issue we run every year. That’s right. You literally get paid to be funny. For me, this was an (albeit, short-lived) life-long dream come true. And the best thing is that most editors will give you absolute freedom to write on any topic that you so please – as long as it pertains to the section you are writing for at least. If you have any handy dandy photoshop/illustrator skills – even better! I personally got to photoshop Dr. Day as Albus Dumbledore (with his permission, I promise!) – and it really doesn’t get any more entertaining than that!
All in all, I really think that the Furman Paladin Newspaper is an organization that is completely underrated. If you, like me, are one of the few people in this world who enjoys writing for the sake of writing/really likes to poke fun, then I really recommend joining!
Check out some of the articles we’ve written this year!:
http://furmannewspaper.com