School has already started again. Someone told me that winter break
this term was a week shorter than last year’s. I haven’t actually
bothered to confirm that statement, but it seems about right. It’s 2003
already?
It’s four days into the week. I write this on a Thursday. I woke up
late this morning, because I was playing music until 4 a.m with my
friend Nick, and then I woke up about eight minutes before my Iris
Murdoch class started. Even though, since I live so close to campus,
eight minutes is about what it takes for me to get from my house to the
classroom, I figured I’d just, you know, not go. Hopefully the
professor won’t be reading this. Somehow I don’t think that he will,
so no problem there, but I always feel a bit unsettled when I miss a
class “for no reason.” I don’t use an alarm clock, so if I miss
something, I tend to figure it’s because I was too caught up in
something else going on in my head. Too caught up to know when it’s
time to wake up and get ready for school. So I didn’t go.
I decided to contribute to the whole blog project because I didn’t
really know anything about them until Brook — news editor two sets of
desks down from me — suggested them. I looked at his own blog site
(which I won’t mention here because it’s already linked from his
biography, and I’m sure he’ll mention it again and again) and then
found
out they’re all the rage these days. And I tend to write about
everything, and these days write more than I don’t write, so I thought
“Why not?” Even if there are limitations, this is just one more medium
in which to express my thoughts. I’m approaching this as a kind of
formal journal, but one that’s appropriate for everyone.
So I guess this is an opportunity to say “What I think…” a whole
bunch. Emphasis on the dot, dot, dot, because that’s what this will be
all about. “I think…” followed by whatever I choose to fill in the
ellipsis. I mean, it seems better that way — if you’re somehow
interested in people’s opinions, you go to their opinions, instead of
them coming to you. So maybe that’s what this can be… a catalogue of
likes and dislikes, once a week, for all to read. All who choose to.
I don’t want to get too personal because casting personal thoughts off
into the ether-like no-space of the internet can be dangerous. So this
will be self-censored because if I said everything, what excitement
will be left? Life is context-sensitive. Certain events, words, ideas
have greater impact if they’re unleashed in a certain places, moments
and instances.
But I also don’t want to be safe, because safe usually equates to
boring. So all this writing here will be about finding the line, and
walking it.
This is a bit introductory. And I’ve rambled on too much that breaking
into some topic of discussion would seem artificial at this point. So
I’ll just talk about how I got into journalism, because like many
significant events over the progression and regression of my life so
far, it was all sort of accidental. Whether the Emerald is
life-changing, I
haven’t yet determined. But at the very least I would be
comfortable calling it career-changing, or career-defining. And more
things, but I haven’t been here very long yet and still have a lot to
figure out.
I started working for the Emerald as a freelancer oh… close to two
years ago now, when I e-mailed the entertainment editor at the time and
asked if I could write an album review. This was way back in 2001. I
applied for a job three times before I was hired. It was going to be
four times, but I trusted my third (re)application to an editor (who
doesn’t work here anymore) who never turned it in. Oh well. Before I
was hired, I had written a lot of stories, although in hindsight, what
I thought was a lot was really a little. When I was a freelancer, I had
a line of thought that, paraphrased, would go something like “Wow, I
have eight stories published!” Working here full time, it became “Wow,
I have 50 stories published?” Now, I’ve just stopped counting. I also
stopped taking my stories home with me because while at first it was
cool to have a complete stack of everything I’d written, the novelty
has worn off. I don’t need to waste more paper anyway.
I didn’t do any freelancing for the last half of 2001, because of
frustrations, that of course, no one remembers but me. After not being
hired for the second time, I was told I could freelance for the arts
and entertainment desk (called “Pulse”) so I would be able to write
stories and not have to go through the freelance editor. This didn’t
work out at all. After writing one CD review, I started working on a
story about “The Brief History of Time” and Stephen Hawking. I talked
to philosophy and physics professors, I tape recorded interviews, and I
condensed a lot of complex information down into an easy-to-read form
that didn’t rob the ideas of their integrity. I wanted to make it the
first in a series of stories, where I would choose a cool topic, then
talk to professors and other interesting folks about it. This didn’t
work out at all. The story was rejected. I can’t remember the exact
wording for the rejection I received, but I was told it wouldn’t reach
its target audience, because it would go right over their heads. It was
too long (30 inches, which is seemingly taboo for a small college
newspaper), and not timely — this I find particularly ironic, because
Hawking had just released a few weeks earlier. The professors whom I
quoted for the story don’t remember me now. Either that, or they ignore
me. The first day back at work (this last Sunday) I passed within two
feet of one professor and looked him right in the eye. He just on kept
walking like he’d never seen me in his life.
All that was so long ago. But I still have the story sitting in my desk
drawer, written to the AP spec and spell-checked, waiting to be
revived. Takers, anyone?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person who works at the paper and
doesn’t get stressed out. Of course, I’m not an editor, and I don’t
work on the news desks, both of which it seems would increase the
stress-o-meter significantly. But maybe if I identify the mechanism
for other people, then they can avoid being stressed out too.
That’s all for now.