My final column last semester was something to do with the Middle East crisis, specifically the situation between Israel and the Palestinian people. However the important thing here is not the topic, but the fact that following that piece, I had the proudest day of my “journalistic” career. No, I didn’t get nominated for any awards (and I have no delusions about that ever occurring). The event was the receipt of my first ever generation of written feedback.

I confess that I read a few of the feedback responses online; offering views both in support of, as well as against my position. Once again, this had nothing to do with whether, or how many people supported or opposed my opinion. More than anything else, I took pride in writing an article on important issue, an issue important enough, with an opinion strong enough, to draw some feedback.

My main motivation for writing in this newspaper is to create some dialogue, with the hope that people will be able to take themselves outside their comfort zone. With any luck, it will give some of our readers the opportunity to learn a little something new about the world around them.

Before anyone starts off with the tirades about how pretentious I am for believing that I have anything to teach, let me clarify – I have no expectation of teaching anything in a 600 word column. My goal is that the dialogue with those around us all will allow us to learn, even if it is a discussion about how stupid or biased my views are. At this age, I can never claim to have gained the wisdom I need to get through my own life, so I know I can’t possibly have much to teach.

For those who like to criticize “lack of research” in a columnist I think you would do well to recognize that no research is perfect. Statistics are very subjective and surveys are never completely unbiased.

There are far too many people who think they know what is happening in the world just because they have read some book, even though most of these people know better than to assume that books always tell the complete story. Not to discredit books entirely, but you cannot pretend to have any expertise in any area without significant real life experience. I truly believe this applies to all things related to human social experiences, just like it does to academic fields. If you’re going to rag on someone’s research, you better bring more than just some quoted stats or some “facts” out of some book.

I don’t expect that anything I have to say is important enough to bring any earth-shattering epiphanies. But I intend to continue to do my best to create dialogue with the soapbox I have the privilege of occupying.

Effective communication has got to be near the top of the list of things that set us apart from animals. I’ll grant that some of us are still bear far too much resemblance to the “missing link” in our communication skills, but I think the vast majority of us are evolved enough to have sane, intelligent dialogue with the people around us – it’ll do us all a lot of good.

In response to my aforementioned last column, I also received an interesting anonymous e-mail. The composer of this message pretty much just wanted to hurl insults at me, and accused me of selling out to the American devil.

I will say that someone who doesn’t have the cajones to take responsibility for sending that type of e-mail cannot expect to be taken seriously. Needless to say, I decided the message wasn’t worth reading, so I never got through to the end of it. But I’ll tell you this, I was proud to have written something that inspired so much passion in that reader that he or she took the time to create a bogus e-mail account and compose a whole page of epithets to hurl at me.

I guess what I’m trying to express is that the agreement or disagreement with a columnist is not and shouldn’t ever be personal. I can’t say I agree with all of the Daily columnists, or any of the other newspaper columns I read. But I can disagree with someone without hating hisguts. To quote Mary J. Blige, “We don’t need no playa hatin`”. Don’t hate the player just because you hate the game.

Emeka Anyanwu is a senior in electrical engineering from Ames.