My short career as a journalist

Well you guys, I had a nice stint as a journalist writing for A&M's newspaper. It lasted all of three months and I got a definitive answer on one of my life questions: my career path will not include reporting.

I'm pretty not good at it, in my fairly critical opinion (though despite my deadline missing habits and a feeling of "I have no idea what I'm doing", the editors liked me and what I wrote). The writing part was fine. Great, even. I loved being able to sit down and crank something out because I love to write and I was writing something that was not analytical of a novel or a research paper about educational theories. It was something that people my age would read and may be interested in.

The cause of my journalistic demise was the knowledge that I was so not a journalist. Not even a little bit. Calling up people and asking them all these questions felt like an intrusion into their lives and an inconvenience of their time. I felt horribly guilty if a story didn't run because I had hunted down these people and wasted their time.

I know that's not what it was. Not really, anyways. Interviews didn't take very long and people were open to talk about things they liked and were involved in. But still. The self-conscious and insecure part of me felt really bad about a story not running, but I knew it was because of logistics and other stories in the paper that were going to be run.

I learned a lot. Without a doubt, I learned a lot. That part was really cool. I feel like I have a glimpse of what working for a publisher looks like. Maybe not extensively (probably not, let's be real here), but I know what it means to write on a deadline now and to have people waiting on things in your hands. The amount stress was surprising and kept me up at night--which is funny, because my job was the minimum amount of everyone who worked for the paper. Just further confirmation that journalism and fast-and-hard stories aren't my strong suit.

Do I regret it? Nope. Not even a little bit. It was a valuable experience and I'm glad I did it. But unless I'm interviewed for something, you probably won't see my name in the Battalion next semester.

The next step in the adventure is on its way.