What You Know and What You Think You Know

Post by Isabella-

I've spent a lot of my life writing. I can't remember a time in my life when I haven't had a pen in my hand writing a story or song or poem. I've always felt that I could never express myself properly in speech. Everything I have ever said has come out wrong in some way or another. I've always felt that my words come across better in writing than in speech.

This has always lead me to believe that the natural path for my life would be to become a writer of some kind. It made sense. I write somewhat decently and I love it. What would ever be the problem?

During my freshman year of college, I got talked into declaring my major as Cellular Biology instead of something to do with writing. I was under the impression, given to me by my family, that getting a degree in anything other than science would be a waste of time and frowned upon. Everything other than science is fluff. It's easy. It's too easy. It's too simple. It should be left for those who are "beneath" my family.

It was going along pretty well. I was getting through my classes well enough. The problem was I hated it. It was torture. The classes were hard, yes, but that wasn't the issue. I am an excellent student and can handle hard classes. The issue was that it was something I hated with a passion of a million suns. So, I changed my major the summer before my senior year. Supposedly, this was a stupid move. What was wrong with me? How could I do that when it means I'll be behind and get a degree in something that will amount to nothing more than a sheet of paper in a frame?

So, I worked my butt off so that I would only be one semester behind. All that was left at the end of May was for me to get my internship done this summer, take fall classes and graduate. Then I'd have to find a job, pay off the minimal school loans I have and work on saving money for a house. Simple, right? True, that would be simple. Until there was a wrench thrown in that plan as well.

I've been at my internship for two weeks. The amount of stories I've gotten in the paper are in the double digits. I've taken time off to go to a workshop in Oklahoma City, sat through a photography "lesson" and sat through a basics of reporting "lesson." I've learned the ins-and-outs of interviews and reporting and writing. I've also learned that I hate it. I am thoroughly disgusted with journalism. I would kill myself if I had to do that every day for the rest of my life.

Reporters are disgusting people who perk up when they hear the police scanner come on, who race to fires and wrecks with injuries, who find a thrill in the pain and destruction going on in their city. Of course, the thrill is the story that they'll get to write from it and not from the fact that someone has been hurt. Nonetheless, I find it hard to distinguish the two when I see reporters excitedly running from the newsroom to go to the scene of a wreck.

Reporters are people who weasel their way into the lives of humans who are just trying to go about their day. They creep up and take photos of you in a public place and then ask you oh so nicely for your name so that they can use it for their story. They try to get information from people who just got hurt or whose house just got destroyed. They sneak up to places that they really shouldn't be just to get a story. During one story, I went out to where some firefighters were doing hazardous materials training and I felt like such a disgusting and horrible person. I know that it's just a training, but these people with real jobs, with jobs that are meant to help protect the town and its citizens, were distracted by someone who just wanted to let people know that "hey, firefighters are doing their jobs! Yay, go firefighters!" It would be different if the news was something major such as reporting around 9/11. But everything I've seen so far has been fluff pieces or digging information out of police reports and posting mug shots of people who may not have actually done anything wrong, but have been taken into custody.

Let me tell you about my editor. On top of everything, my disgust for the field of journalism, my hatred of their love for destruction, pain, violence and scandal, I have an editor who seems to be completely bi-polar. At least that's how she acts with me. She will be fine in the morning when she's setting out an assignment for me to do, but half way through the morning she jumps down my throat for no reason, gets mad when I take a lunch break and stay in the newsroom for it instead of going out to eat every day. She yelled at me on Friday for not doing something that I didn't know I was supposed to do. She acted like she was actually, literally, going to hit me when she found out I didn't do that one thing. And at the end of the day, she edits my work and says with a wave of her regal hand "Liberty, you may go." I almost feel the need to bow or curtsy on my way past her desk every night. If this is how editors work in this field of writing, then I have no need to be a reporter of any kind. I almost feel that I would enjoy working at a Subway for the rest of my life more than I would enjoy this job.

I know that I shouldn't put this internship down so much. I need it for my degree and it's a lot better than some internships people have at either weekly papers or monthly magazines. This internship holds more weight than those internships. I get that. It just doesn't change how I feel and it doesn't change the fact that I now know without a doubt in my mind that this is not the job for me.

It is best that I figured this out when I did. I still have time to go back to school and figure out what to do. I plan on sticking out the rest of my internship--2 weeks down, 6 to go-- and finishing my Mass Comm. degree. But I'm considering going to NSU in the spring for a Master's degree in Communication and a Master's degree in English. I can't get into the English program right now because I don't have enough extra hours of English classes under my belt. So, I figured that I could get an M.A. in Communication and while I'm doing that I could take weekend classes, online classes, intersession classes...etc. to get enough hours to get into the English program. It'll mean a lot of debt by the time I finally graduate, but it'll mean that I don't do journalism for the rest of my life and I'll have three degrees by the time I finally leave school for good. Two of the degrees will be M.A.s and one will be a B.A. Heck, I might just go ahead and try to get a Ph.D. in English. We'll see how I feel once I finish my two M.A.s.

I know that there's a lot of uncertainty thrown into my future by deciding that journalism isn't the right path for my life, but there's also going to be a lot more joy. And I can cross this off the list of job possibilities for my life which means that it'll be easier to know where I want to go in the future.

People may tell you that doing a job you hate is just a part of life. Life may make you feel like you've got no choice but to do something you hate so that you can have a sense of stability in your life. But that's all bullcrap. Do what you love no matter what. You are not meant to suffer through your life. You are meant to find something you do, something you do well and take joy from, and turn it into something you can love doing for the rest of your life. You only get one shot at life. Why would you waste it doing something you hate?