I have a notebook where I write down column ideas when they come to me. Upon looking back at these ideas, I realize that the majority of them are awful, and that’s probably why I decided not to use them. Every once in a while I realize that an idea is terrible, and I end up using it anyway because my column is late, I have no other material, and I hope that the bad column will make my other columns look better by comparison. Because the end of the year is nearing, I thought it would be nice to revisit some of my ideas that never made it into the Maroon.
The “Why don’t more people dress like Lady Gaga?” column— I rejected this idea because I thought that it would inspire too many people to start wearing meat dresses, which is highly unsanitary, and I didn’t want to be the cause of an E. coli outbreak across Loyola.
The”not enough hours in the day” column— I came up with this column idea when I was afraid that I wouldn’t have time to write a column. This was possibly during midterms. Since time is a man-made invention, I was going to argue for adding at least four more hours into the day. After giving this idea some thought, I realized that the 28-hour day would probably mess up the whole night and day schedule that we have going on here, and that it maybe wasn’t a great idea.
The”not enough days in the week” column— This idea was born shortly after I realized that the “not enough hours in a day” thing probably wasn’t going to work out. In this column, I wanted to add another day to the week, specifically to the weekend. I don’t remember why I didn’t end up making this into an actual column because that sounds like a great idea right now.
The”life would be more fun if there were more super villains on the loose” column— I chose not to write this column because I figured that this fact was fairly self-evident.
The”wear sunscreen” column— I came up with this idea after walking by the quad, noticing some sunbathers, and wondering how many of them would go on to develop skin cancer. This day was especially hot and sunny. I remember because I decided to sit outside and read for about thirty minutes. A professor warned me to go back inside because I looked like I was “going to burst into flames.” This struck me as a strange thing to say. When I went back inside, I realized that I was incredibly sunburned. It was then that I decided writing a pro-sunscreen column would be slightly hypocritical, as I do not often wear sunscreen, though I probably should wear it at all times.
The”rejected column ideas” column.— I first rejected this idea because I didn’t think that I had enough bad ideas to write a column about. It turns out I was wrong, and I am chock-full of terrible things to write about. Who knew?
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