Imagine if you were given the opportunity to come up with one column topic a week to research, critique and submit to the DeKalb public for their viewing pleasure.

Just think, you could pick almost any issue in the world to discuss and you get to have a nice little mug shot next to your weekly contribution in the 16,000 daily-circulated Northern Star.

Additionally, you even have a special e-mail address, where you can receive comments from readers.

To top things off, you get paid for submitting your opinion! Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?

Obviously, I applied for the position, blew my interviewer away (wink), started researching and got to writing. And I just now realized this is not an easy job. I realize around this time of the school year, there will be columnists writing on the hardships of their job description.

It is finals/paper/presentation time for students, an even more lethal blow for the few of us who are taking 18 credit hours and involved in one too many organizations.

I can sympathize with you disbelievers out there, who may see my job as an easy position to fill. In fact, I remember reading last year’s columnists write about the horrors of their position, and thinking “yeah, right.” Rashida Restaino, a former NIU columnist and a friend of mine, used to tell me about how difficult it was to find something relevant to students to write about, then research, write out, edit and then prepare to get hate-e-mailed to death for.

The smirks can be seen from here when I explain the difficulties of this job – the “yeah, right” thought bubbles go up above the heads of the uninfluenced.

Let me explain my position. See, my columnist woes drift more toward the seriousness of this position in relation to other peoples’ perspectives and opinions than just how my column deadline fits into my school schedule.

Columnists are connected to their topics, and when readers seek to extend the conversation (through e-mail, conversation, or invitations to events dealing with your topic) it extends your involvement in the topic. It’s not just 600 words you write and forget about.

For instance, last week I received a forwarded e-mail in response to the column I wrote about the upcoming Christmas season and the victims of Hurricane Katrina – although I also want to emphasize anyone in need can use a $50 gift card, not just hurricane victims.

The e-mail was from a family in Canada who wished to specifically do something for the Katrina victims, but didn’t know where to best direct their efforts.

A couple of weeks after Katrina hit, I received a call from someone who wanted me to talk with a young lady, now attending NIU, who was one of the first college transfer students from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.

In regards to my hip-hop columns, I’ve been invited to a youth summit hosted by conscioushiphop.com and called on to speak at a local panel discussion here at NIU.

Not to mention the countless discussions I’ve had – sometimes in the strangest places – concerning something I wrote.

One such discussion occurred at Borders, 2520 Sycamore Road. A woman – who was not African-American – and I discussed the Millions More Movement. She asked me what it was and how it affected me and seemed genuinely interested, mainly because of the column I wrote concerning the Rev. Louis Farrakhan and the Millions More March.

A friend of mine who attends Illinois State University called me recently (in response to the column I wrote concerning the supposed media bias given to Caucasians over people of color in abduction cases) to let me know it was eerie to read the column now, in light of the tragic events surrounding former ISU student Olamide Adeyooye.

The job of a newspaper columnist is difficult, I tell you.

I remember our first columnist training meeting the week before school started, and our editorial editor challenged each one of us to constantly create columns that would interest NIU students and were topics we stood strongly behind. That task in itself is very difficult in that, there are so many readers and so many points of view on this campus alone. How can I write something that will interest enough of them?

I hope you can believe columnists when we vent about the hardships of our job. More importantly, I hope I’m fulfilling my job to you, dear reader.

If I’m not, feel free to send me an e-mail.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.