Learning is rarely a solitary practice, even though we’ve come to believe that it is. 

Walking through campus, I see so many students buried in books or laptops, earbuds in their ears, absorbing facts and knowledge. Some groups do gather in the cafeteria and discuss school (or other things) in groups over fries and notes. But the course of higher learning, the idea of planning a degree that’s yours and yours alone, can be very individualistic.

Our hope at The Uniter is that anyone who writes a piece with us can feel like part of a larger collaborative process. But we don’t always get to meet writers face to face. A lot of our interactions happen via a computer screen, and those can sometimes feel dehumanizing or confusing. 

Sometimes we need to reconnect and remember that we’re all working towards the same goal: to learn and grow as writers and editors. We hone our skills so we can put them out into the world and share them. We revise and refine so that the stories we’re telling come through clearly.

On Tuesday night, a group of staff and volunteers gathered in the Uniter office for a seminar on investigative journalism techniques. The point of this event was to collect and share knowledge, to inspire curiosity, to develop some tools to improve our work. But it was also a great occasion to meet more contributors and to talk about the finer points of our work.

We only have seven more issues left until we wrap up our weekly production. We’re in the home stretch. But that doesn’t mean we’re done learning, and if you’d like to get involved, there’s still time left to share in the experience. Email [email protected] or pop in to ORM14 on a Wednesday from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Published in Volume 71, Number 19 of The Uniter (February 9, 2017)