Pleased to meet you
By Anneleen Naudts

Please allow me to introduce myself - I am a new reporter here at the Caledon Citizen and the King Township Sentinel.

I am a Caledon resident, and after a four-year hiatus I am re-familiarizing myself with our town. As I'm becoming acquainted with you, I thought it may be nice for you to become acquainted with me.

Where to start? Perhaps at medieval Ghent, Belgium. I come from the land of chocolate, waffles, Tintin, Manneken Pis, lace and Adolf Sax, inventor of the saxophone.

I was somewhat destined to become a journalist. As a kid, I spent afternoons pretending to conduct interviews. I tediously copied existing interviews into a notebook - acting as if I were the one posing the questions.

However, those afternoons didn't necessarily mean I was headed for a life as a reporter.

For nearly two years, I collected empty pharmaceutical products so I could pretend to be a pharmacist. I acquired boxes full of empty pill containers, cough syrup bottles, packaging from first aid supplies, you name it. No ailment anyone could've had that I couldn't have pretended to treat.

When my pharmacist career ran out of steam, I opted to pursue medicine. I lined up all my dolls in crates, and began running a hospital for sick dolls.

Then there is the time I informed my parents I wanted to become an orca trainer when I grew up, though this wasn't something I could pursue at home.

In sum, I had a lot of interests.

I think the interests you have as a kid, to some extent stick with you in life. And to my great delight, so does Grace Slick, singer of Jefferson Airplane.

In her biography, she said young people frequently approach her with the same worry: they have no clue what to do with their lives. While recalling these instances, she smiled, and said she tells them to do what they were doing when they were five.

It's a lighthearted way of looking at things, but chances are you've harbored a soft spot for the interests you inherently gravitated toward when you were young. Winding up returning to these outside of a fantasy world, make a job seem like a natural fit.

Now, I owe this story a disclaimer: I don't consider this an excuse to bombard kids with career and goalsetting jargon. Nor do I think kids should be asked to visualize where'd they'd like to be in 15 years. I think we should let kids draw us back into their worlds, rather than prepping them early on to join ours.

So here I am, having found my way back to my early interests.

Initially, trading in the university lifestyle (think no classes before 10 a.m., postmidnight food-runs and weekends starting on Thursdays) has taken some getting used to, but thankfully there is a vast supply of coffee in and around the office.

Despite the lifestyle, I did earn a degree. This past November, I graduated with an honours degree in political science from the University of Toronto.

But enough about me, this paper ultimately is about you - it is about your stories, your events, your debates, and your lives. I hope you will let me in on those, and that you'll approach me with what's on your mind. I'm looking forward to it.

Pleased to meet you.