Back to school ... sort of

So after about a month at my new job, I was approached by my boss and told about an online "continuing education" class offered by the Poynter Institute about how to write better headlines. He urged me to apply for it, and said that if I were accepted my employer would foot the bill.

My initial feeling was, "Oh great. I suck so bad at writing headlines that I was the one singled out among all the people who work here as the best candidate for this class. Fantastic." But instead of being such a pessimist, I decided to look on the bright side and view it as an opportunity to improve my skills - because let's face it, I do indeed suck at writing headlines. I just thought I was doing a better job at hiding it. Apparently not.

It's not entirely my fault though. You see, because I decided to enroll in a completely worthless major (magazines) I never was trained at all in how to write headlines, how to lay out a page, or how to do pretty much anything except write crappy old-lady stories about gardening and landscaping. Well - I guess it technically is my fault for enrolling in that major.

Anywho - I've been busy the past three weeks with my online headline-writing class, and it's been a good experience. I now have slightly more confidence in my ability to tone down the suck-factor of the headlines that I write. I can even spot suckiness in other people's headlines and then change them so that they're better. I still have one week left to go in my class, and now we're going to learn how to write those clever headlines you always see that rely on wordplay. FYI - most of those ones suck horrendously because people fall all over themselves trying to make stupid puns that don't make a whole lot of sense.