From time to time I get various responses via e-mail, phone calls, or letters about the topics that I write about in these “Staff Stuff” columns. People I meet while out taking pictures at various events often tell me they enjoy reading my column, and the columns regarding the three cats that live in my house is usually the biggest compliment.

Most of the comments are, in fact, complimentary, and I am appreciative of that. From week to week I never know how my columns will be receieved, and I try to write about something just interesting enough that it’s worth the three to five minutes it takes to read but not so in-depth that a reader has to completely concentrate on it to understand what’s being said. It’s just a light-hearted, conversational column, most of the time, and probably shouldn’t be taken as anything other than that.

Most of the time.

Not every comment has been kind, of course, but I am fine with that. I learned a long time ago that writing is subjective (in the eye of the beholder, so to speak), and no matter the style of writing or what the topic is, or even whom is doing the writing, someone somewhere won’t care for it.

My first experience with this was in college when I took a science course with a professor who was fond of having his students write essays. Here I was, a person who scored a 30 on the ACT’s English portion, who took honors English in college and was a journalism major, writing essay papers for my science professor.

I never got higher than a C-plus on a single one of them. Distraught, I took the essays to my college advisor and to an English teacher and asked them to read the essays and tell me what grade they thought the papers deserved. Both of them said it was a high B, low-to-mid A set of essays.

When I told them I got a C, they were surprised, but they also laughed and told me not to worry about it, that the person who graded them didn’t know anything about writing.

Well, he knew enough to give me a C, but I didn’t say that to them.

After more than 10 years in this profession, and another four or five years studying it in school, it’s just something I have come to accept. It’s impossible to write something that everyone will think is great, and so the goal is to try to write as many different things as possible to appeal to the widest group of people possible. I think I do okay with that, if I do say so myself.

I recalled that incident about the college science papers while I was reading through some e-mails a couple of weeks ago. I had written about the decision to buy my wife a MINI Cooper, and how I drive a Nissan for work and own a Toyota that I drive the rest of the time.

A couple of days after writing the column, someone from Michigan e-mailed me to tell me I should own “American” vehicles instead. I guess she didn’t like what I had to say about owning the cars that I do.

I was disappointed that that was all she took away from the column, which I had intended to be a humorous discussion of what it is like to own a MINI Cooper, but as I learned when taking chemistry in college — interpretative writing is subjective and everyone is going to “grade“ it differently based on their own preferences.