What is the difference between "everyone's opinions" and those I should want to have?: Expert opinions take longer to develop and work better.

        A commonplace in democratic American society declares each person's opinion to be equally valuable, or at least, equally worthy of consideration.  We all know this is not true, but people keep repeating the mantra, "Everyone is entitled to her/his own opinion."  Think about how little that really means in practice.  You can have your opinion.  I can have mine.  But the moment one of us tries to implement that privately held opinion to make something happen, it no longer is someone's "own," but becomes an opinion others are asked to share.  Only expert opinions, slowly arrived at and carefully tested, survive the mass scrutiny that greets claims of managerial or scholarly authority, the kind of opinion that changes the world.  The composing process, including research and revision, that brought you to this stage in your career probably was not sufficiently robust and painstaking to generate expert opinions, but if you are patient and work hard this year, you will make great progress toward being able to think and write like an expert.