The cursor blinks at me mindlessly. The page on the screen is completely empty. I stare back at the cursor, but it does not budge. Long papers with lots of text can be intimidating, but so can an empty page. All that space I have to fill with my creativity. Do I have it in me: do I have the right creative thoughts and can I turn them into words? That’s one feeling I have frequently had when getting down to write the 48 columns I have produced for Resource to date. Once I start writing, I really enjoy the process. But it can be tricky to find the right balance.
I like my columns to be provocative and opinionated on occasion, but I don’t want to offend or hurt anyone. That is a balancing act. In that regard, Resource itself came in for some serious criticism in 2023. To decide for myself how far I want to go, I use a rule of thumb inspired by the Dutch journalist Angela de Jong, who writes a popular, biting TV column in the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. The rule of thumb is that I should feel happy reading my article out loud to the people I am criticizing. That rule of thumb has had to prove its worth.
Unaware of what was coming, she starting reading the column out loud
I was certainly treading a tightrope with my series ‘Is there life after graduation?’ about my first experience of being a nine-to-five desk jockey during my internship. On the one hand I wanted to reveal all about the ups and downs of office life — the weirder the better. On the other hand, I was hoping to get a job offer after my internship… You can see the dilemma. My lifeline, keeping me afloat in the sea of potentially career-damaging creative content, was the Angela-de-Jong principle.
In those articles, I wrote about various organizational issues I faced as someone new to the organization. For example, I wrote that they left me off the invitation for the company outing. That was a little awkward, including for the person who forgot to invite me. Should I mention that? I did. A few weeks later, I got a chance to test my rule of thumb.
At my leaving do, the person who forgot to invite me took a look at my columns. That included my amusing but critical column on how she had failed to invite me for the company trip. Unaware of what was coming, she starting reading the column out loud. Would she feel offended or ashamed? Fortunately her response was a loud laugh. Mission accomplished.
Steven Snijders (26) has recently graduated with his MSc in Economics and Policy and is currently in the no-mans-land between studying and the life of a working person. He writes about the post-student era.
