Journalistic Musings...

“Hi, my name is Jackie Burns, and I’m a journalist writing an article on this event. Do you have a second to answer a few questions?”

Riding the El last weekend, a bag of expensive reporter equipment slung over my shoulder and my Starbucks in hand, I had a flash of myself in 5 years, an actual journalist, doing the same things I’m doing now. I covered a high school football team and interviewed the mom of the captain of the cheer-leading team and felt, for the first time at Northwestern, that I was actively performing the exact tasks that I will do for my job. Getting permission from my instructor to cut the word “student” from my introduction made everyone 50 times more willing to talk to me (which is psychologically amusing) and made me feel much more professional. One of the cheerleaders did ask me if they were all going to be rich and famous. My answer? “When I get rich and famous, you guys will be too!” Journalists don’t go in for the fame or the money and if those are your goals, you need to get out now, before it’s too late.

But, snapping pictures with one hand, holding my audio recorder with the other, and my video camera set up on a step taping the game and talking to the spectators, I had another realization. Coming in as a freshman, I was somehow under the impression that the next four years would prepare me to be a journalist and give me all the knowledge I needed and that, when I graduated, I would know exactly what I was doing. But last weekend, it hit me that I will never, ever know what I’m doing. It’s kind of like growing up: when you’re a little kid, you think that once you grow up, you’ll somehow have a map of all the right things in your head. You won’t be confused or lost or not know what the right decision might be. But I’m already almost 20 and I still don’t have that map. You don’t automatically know the right decision, but the experience that you have makes you able to pretend like you might. Journalism is even more extreme, though. There is so much unpredictability, so many surprises. I read articles and realize that the reporters that write for the New York Times really have no more “knowledge” than I do. When I graduate, I will be just the same confused, lost girl, but I’ll be able to fake it a little better. I don’t think there will ever be an interview or a situation where I will show up and feel that I am positive I know what I’m doing. But each article I write, each video that I record gives me a little bit more experience to add to my bag of tricks. And all that matters is that I can fool the people that I’m interviewing into thinking that I actually know what I’m doing… confidence trumps book-knowledge any day of the week.