When people ask me what my major is and I reply “journalism,” the response is always the same. No one ever asks me what I want to do with my degree or why I got into journalism (and, maybe that’s for the best, because in both cases I sure as hell don’t know). Instead, I am constantly bombarded by the same question: “Have you taken Info Hell yet?”
Journalism 202: Information Gathering, most colorfully known as “Info Hell,” is a pre-journalism class in which students have 10 weeks to write an exhaustively researched 20ish-page research paper and at least 70 pages of annotations. The course, as indicated by its nickname, has achieved something of a legendary status among the student body. Ghost stories are told around the campfire (or hookah) about Info Hell students who went insane after annotating one too many sources or got lost and starved to death in the library stacks. And, every term, a few hundred terrified pre-journalism majors must face the terror of Info Hell firsthand, marching off into oblivion with the same fatalistic mentality as a red shirt security officer on the Starship Enterprise: The coming days will be bleak, and not everyone will make it out alive.
I am currently enrolled in Info Hell myself, and although it’s only the second week, I can proudly say that I’ve already considered switching majors five times. Much of my weekend was spent immersed in an ocean of research about the current state of the American prison system, and as you read this I am fighting my way through a flurry of two-page annotations that are due by the end of the week. The work is, to say the least, unpleasant.
So imagine my disappointment when I heard that next year, Info Hell, along with two other prerequisites, will be discontinued in favor of a pair of more streamlined courses designed to keep up with the changing face of journalism. Those courses will include revised Info Hell course material, a sort of “New and Improved Info Hell,” sans the final research paper. There will be no more 100-page project, no more throngs of anxious students outside Kinko’s the night before the due date, no more horrific descents into madness at the inability to find one more scholarly source. It seems that the University wants to keep its curriculum up-to-date – and more power to it. It appears that the intent is to remove the mammoth research paper aspect of the journalism major and replace it with something, in the eyes of the administration, more useful to the modern journalist.
However, I think Info Hell is a very useful course as it is. Yes, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever have to face down that much raw research with such precise requirements in their professional life, but I don’t think that’s the point. I think that the point of Info Hell is to be horrific, frightening, and larger than life – the Keyser Söze of prerequisite classes, if you will. Or at least, it should be. While the course may have been designed as a means to teach students about how to distill facts into a cohesive paper, it now does a much more important job: It separates the men and the women from the boys and the girls.
I’m not really sure why I decided to pursue a major in journalism – it’s certainly not because I want to be journalist. Part of the reason was because I didn’t like the English curricula, and part was that, under the right circumstances, I look like a TV news anchor. But my motives for being in the journalism department certainly aren’t ironclad.
It’s going to take a course like Info Hell for me to find out whether journalism is what I want to do or not. If I find that I can’t keep up with the class’s considerable workload, that will be a surefire sign that I should look for something else to study. However, if I pass, I’ll know that I’m on the right track. Rather than get rid of a class like Info Hell, I feel like there should be a similar class in every major. Sure, it might sound objectionable at the outset, but give it some thought. When, chemistry majors, would you like to realize that you hate chemistry? As a freshman or a sophomore, or as you’re walking off the stage with your chemistry degree in hand?
That which does not kill you only makes you stronger; worst case scenario, I’ll be dead by the end of the term. Best case? I’ll be an exceptionally strong aspiring journalist.
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