Love us? Hate us? Tell us.

I once changed my major because I was terrified of taking one class: poetry workshop. It was the last requirement I needed to complete the creative writing track of my English degree, but because I kept having traumatic flashbacks to my high school poetry (which featured angsty hits like “Rising Darkness”), I shifted my emphasis to literature thinking I was cleverly avoiding the literary equivalent of a dodgeball to the face. In fact, I thought I was missing all the dodgeballs by skipping gym class and eating a pizza instead.

This choice was objectively bad. When I decided to complete an optional thesis project, I wasn’t able to work on a fiction manuscript that would have made applying to graduate programs in creative writing significantly less stressful. I also lost the opportunity to become a better reader of my peers’ poetry—it’s much more difficult to become conversational about topics like prosody and enjambment in isolation than it would have been in the workshop environment.

Without exception, critique makes us better at what we do. I yearned for people to completely deconstruct my stories in fiction workshops for this reason, and I’m still not sure why I couldn’t embrace that philosophy across genres—but I do know I regret it. And that’s why I hope you all find time to complete this year’s student fee review survey.

The Sentry has a fairly large staff—about 25 people—but we still risk being stuck inside of Tivoli 345’s isolated perspective. When we host workshops at pitch meetings, and when we have editorial meetings to complete a close reading of our most recent issue, we can only offer ourselves so much objectivity. The student fee review survey gives us the opportunity to better ourselves through thousands of students’ opinions, and it gives you the chance to shape the direction of many student fee funded offices on campus.

You should have already been sent a link to the survey in your CU Denver email account, but if you want to get free pizza to share your thoughts, you can complete the survey in person at the Lynx Center in the Student Commons building from March 7 through March 15 between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m (excluding Fridays and weekends). We very much look forward to incorporating your feedback into the production of next year’s volume of The Sentry.