I’ve only been studying Journalism for about a year but already I can see it making an impact on my life in weird, wonderful and – maybe to you – hilarious ways:
Everything you write today will have the importance of toilet paper tomorrow.
Journalism is so fast paced that if you don’t get your story done within the hour, chances are you may as well never do it. News is like Usain Bolt, shooting around a race track and you’re like – well you. Except more sleep deprived than usual and you’re trying to catch him before the stream roller that is a deadline runs you over. Grammar errors and mis-quoted sources are the untied shoe laces that will trip you up. A word of warning – wear slip on shoes.
The phrase “no reason, i’m just wondering” is your best weapon.
If you are searching for information, chances are that you can play the ‘dumb student’ role. Ringing a bus company to gain information on a new night time bus route required me to make out that I had never used a bus before, with the man at the end of the phone having to ask me at one point if I knew what a bus stop was. He was pleased to know that I did, I was just pleased that none of my teachers took me to one side to check that I had not lost the plot.
The phrase works wonders with your peers, especially those who know something interesting but are so hazy due to hangovers that you can ask any and everything out of them. More often than not, their sober counterparts will regret that 6th Jaeger bomb but you’ll be eternally grateful for it.
You can smell secrets on people like alcohol on a tramp’s breath.
Facebook, Twitter and a Google search can help you find anyone, learn anything and outsmart everyone. This will however, lead you to become so oversuspicious of everyone and everything that you may go crazy. Although, being nosey and finding out things can either make or break you, so be careful.
Having someone sub-edit your work is more uncomfortable than those talks with your parents
Having someone slash their pen through your copy, impaling the words “WEAK”, “DOESN’T MAKE SENSE” and “PASSIVE” on your unsuspecting work can be awful. Ultimately, it can help you achieve something really great but for those few minutes you’d have the ground, the sky – even a passing giant eat you up as the experienced eyes of a sub editor scanning your copy is like a worker at baggage control. You panic, even though you know everything inside is good stuff. Both will always find something for you to explain on.
Forget Freddie Krueger, Deadlines get into your dreams and cause you to go insane.
Take my first assignment for example. I was a good student, I handed the work in the day before the deadline, checked, double and tripled checked that everything was handed in correctly so I could have a nice lie in without the fear of a looming deadline. What was the reality? Me suddenly waking and sitting bolt up right at 11am the following morning, despite going to bed late and my alarm not set to go off for another hour. I checked once again and yes, everything was handed in correctly still. Needless to say, I go to bed every night before a deadline with my Turn-it-In receipt laminated and tied to me.
Finally, Grammar
Coming from someone who thought grammar was spelt with an ‘er’ instead of a ‘ar’ I was in for a big shock. Grammar was pushed to the back burner during high school and college, If i didn’t know a word or a piece of punctuation I would just ignore it and use something I knew how to use. That doesn’t apply to journalism. Grammar’s offspring: The Style Guide (It is colored red, it’s not evil in the slightest….) is like a screaming baby clinging to your neck during every piece of work, the slightest error against the guide and you are screwed. Fighting against the style guide and winning is like throwing a bowling ball into the ocean and hoping it will float back up. Learn the guide. Forget your mother’s name and how to drive if you have too just learn the style guide!
Despite all of these things, Journalism can be a lot of fun. It’s a wonderful excuse for me to be nosey (I was investigating something!), sarcastic (I was pitching a headline!) to be on Facebook (I was looking for sources!) and to leave your work to the last minute. (It’s not news unless it’s new!) It’s rewarding too, people telling you that your story was the best, the most informative or the fastest to break fills you with a rush and an excitement that keeps you ploughing on the next day. Just enjoy those hours on the pillow while you can because they soon become few and far between!
Do You Know What I Mean? 
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