With this being the third year that I’ve managed to put my foot in the door of the newspaper office at Orono High School, a few cliché phrases come to mind. I would venture a guess that everyone has heard the “third time’s the charm” cliché. Usually, the meaning behind this phrase is that if you’ve failed at something twice, you’re bound to get it on attempt numero tres.

Upon further examination, I can now see that this adage doesn’t apply to my predicament, as this is technically the 17th column I’ve written for the paper. Frankly, I know just as well as you, oh faithful reader, that number 17 is no place where anyone has ever hit a stride (though I do believe I may have set a record for my longest-ever run-on sentence).

Another nugget of wisdom which I can connect to this situation is “good things come in threes”—this one, of course, we can throw right out. At this point in the article I suppose all the new readers of this publication probably have several queries about this article, such as:
1. Why is this guy such a pessimist?
2. Who talks like this?
3. Why am I reading this waste of space when there are so many better articles in this paper?

To all of those queries, my respective responses would be:
1. I know I’m not fooling anyone in trying to pass off this work as being of any merit.
2. I do – apologies in advance, as you’ll be dealing with this through June (if I’m not canned before then.)
3. Beats me. Maybe it’s time you reevaluated what your literary interests are?

Well, given this brief symposium, I suppose now ought to be a good time to end this first column, seeing as I’ve exhausted my tried-and-true initial subject of every year; that is, nothing at all. Rest assured, all columns from here on out will have actual topics of discussion – even if none of them will be interesting. Get ready: the fun (your mileage may vary) starts next issue!*
*That goes for my comic strip, as well!

Preston Schlueter is a Staff Reporter for the Spartan Speaks