On Boards and Meetings aka, Why does that one person like their voice SO much?

I recently got chosen to be one of 12 people to write opinion pieces for our local paper, which is pretty cool. I mean, I need to pretty up my portfolio. Part of this deal though is you need to attend meetings of the Community Editorial Board, a board which discusses, umm, community editorial related things.

The first meeting was last night.

My experience with committees in the past has been that they are pointless. A bunch of people get in a room, talk, talk, talk, then you leave, and nothing ever happens. There are always one or two people who like to hear themselves talk for the sake of talking, and they do nothing but that for the entire meeting. You know, the people that have an opinion on everything. ON EVERYTHING.

The first thing we did last night was go around in a circle and introduce ourselves. Personally, I think it would have been more fun to play two truths and a lie, because then people actually listen to what you are saying, but instead they opted for the "Hi, I'm Megan, and I'm an alcoholic, errr I mean, I'm a writer" bio type of stuff. Which is fine, whatever, I know nobody is really listening to me anyway. I've never been around so many people that I have absolutely nothing in common with. Like, never in a million years will they get me, I just know this. Just like I don't get them. There are approximately 5 people that I think are pretty cool, but I dunno, I can see this getting tedious. This has a lot more to do with me, then it does with them, cause you see, while I am very easily amused, I also get bored extremely quickly if you are talking about towers or hospitals or zzzzzzzzz.

I'm not a big fan of debating for debatings sake. People talk, talk, talk about issues, but then don't do anything about it. I get in a very why are we still discussing this mood. I mean, I understand the need for debate and conversation, but sometimes it just gets to the point of silliness. We can sit here and argue with each other when we are essentially agreeing with each other, but what are we going to do about the actual issue? Anyway, there are a couple of people on this thing that irritate me...I will perhaps be able to better articulate why after I spend more time with them.

That being said, I think this board thing might be really cool in that I'll get to learn how a newspaper works, and pretend I'm an extra in His Girl Friday.

At one point an older lady was mocking how "kids these days" talk, and went on a rambling sentence inserting the word "like" after every word. I don't know about you, but I say "like" all the time. Not nearly as much as I used to, but it definitely still peppers my speech, along with "um" and "err" and all other kinds of non words, but I don't think that indicates I'm dumb by any means. Like is the verbal equivalent of a comma. Anyway, I was afraid to speak after that for fear that I would use the word "like" too much and be silently judged by a board room full of people. Bah, I say to that.

One lady was also talking about how she despises blogs, and basically how she thinks they are crap. Which fine, whatever, she's entitled to that opinion. However, I don't see how she can on one hand be all "opinion pieces from the community published in the paper are great" and all "blogs suck" on the other, because aren't they essentially the same thing? Aren't blogs just several opinion pieces from one large community? Does an opinion suddenly become more valuable and trust worthy if it is written in print? I tend to think not, but I suppose some people, mainly older people, would disagree with that.

ANYWAY! I think this community board will be a good thing/bad thing, which I suppose most opportunities in life are anyway.