I want to be a journalist

When I shifted into AB Literature (English), all I had was an appreciation of literature and art and an itching interest in theories and products of critical thinking. However, it has always been a personal practice to have something practical in hand. Literature is highly theoretical, dealing with relationships often existent only in consciousness. I can’t handle living on that alone especially the nightmares of living as a hobo with no apparent real-world function. (Yes, pop culture created a laughing stock out of  an art major's futures) Years in the sciences has always fostered in me a hunger for something more material.

A sticker from a passenger tricycle along Katipunan Ave, Q.C.

I chose journalism. It was a decision not founded upon flipping a coin. In fact, I’ve always wanted to be a journalist. I had a rather (insignificant) fun stint when I was in high school when I wrote for a regional daily. I wrote about personal interests but it did not last long. But, this summer, it has been arranged that I will be working for the same press as an intern as a journalist-in-training. Score!

I’ve been wondering why I’d like to go to journalism. It’s like when you taste chocolate and you want more but you don’t understand why. Under scrutiny, you will realize it is the paradoxical quality of bitterness and tastiness that keeps you above your weight goals. For journalism, it is being able to relay human experience through words. Often, when you read a news article, you are bombarded with information as if you are expected to simulate it around a reader's environment. Maybe it is just my own sentimentality but I think being able to relay reality through words is a wonderful thing. Of course, “reality” here is always in question but to transmit emotions, no matter the “truthfulness”, is just great. (I am not saying that news is just realist fiction, I just acknowledge that forces skew it, and I believe that it is these forces that gives them the human quality.)

Of course, I am not an expert but you can quote me at your own risk. If you check my Kindle, I have style books and handbooks on journalism. I’m reading about it and I’m very interested so far. You can’t imagine the joy I experienced when I discovered you can create folders on the bookmarks bar of a browser. I have a whole folder for links to online newspapers.