I am not a cook or a baker or really anything but a microwaver. I don’t find enjoyment from cooking meals myself, though I’m jealous of those who do, and since neither college nor the fast-paced nature of this job are conducive to learning how to cook well, I accepted my fate of frozen meals.

But I stumbled upon a cheat that goes by the name of Crock-Pot. It’s basically a prolonged microwave. Because I don’t have to watch it to cook anything, I asked for one for Christmas during college.

Not only did it save me from a life of frozen meals and subsequent high blood pressure, it taught me an important lesson about what I chose to do for a living.

How you may ask?

I wrote a column in the newspaper I interned at that Christmas, which was where my parents lived at the time. In the column, I expressed my cooking woes and expressed my hope that each person reading the column received his or her equivalent of a Crock-Pot.

To this day, I have never written anything so popular.

I had people I knew, people I didn’t know well and even a few people I didn’t know at all asking if I had received my Crock-Pot for Christmas for at least a month.

I’m not going to pretend I know why that column was so popular because I don’t, but I do know that I learned a valuable lesson about finding my own voice from it.

I’m not sure if each writer has a moment — or maybe a few moments, like I do (but that a topic for another column) — when she realizes that her words matter at least a little, that people read what she works on each day.

But it’s actually a startling realization in a way.

At the time, I was a mere intern trying to figure out how to be an intern.

I had no idea anyone read, much less remembered, what I had to say.

Of course, that is a valuable lesson for me still today.

I’ve lost the thrill of seeing my name in print because repetitiveness does that, but I do understand that the print I put my name on carries weight and means I have a responsibility — to readers, to the paper, to myself — to try to make the information I write is accurate.

Obviously, I am one person, and I make mistakes, many mistakes depending on how much sleep I’ve gotten. I’m not perfect, and I don’t always reach that goal.

But I realize the goal, and I see the value in it. I understand that as a source of information, I have to keep the impact of that information in perspective.

And I learned all of that from a Crock-Pot.

 

Sarah Mahan is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post. You may reach her at sarah.mahan@vicksburgpost.com. Readers are invited to submit their opinions for publication.