JSchool

I love to bitch about Journalism.

It's something all journalism kids kind of love to do, at least here. There are so few of us that as long as we all agree to complain, no one can contradict us, really, because none of them know definitively that we're whining for no good reason. Are we? You'll never know.

I whined about the intro journalism class nonstop last year. It was long, it was dull, it was held on Tuesdays while the rest of FYP students lay around on the quad and read and started on papers. We had to sit through hours of the variously awful journalism prof who held us captive at the end of the day. We had to complete assignments that were not interesting in any way. A lot of student drop out of journalism after first year. They only let 40 of us in in the first place, and by fourth year, there are like 15-20. Tops.

Journalism was just something that kind of happened. I figured I was an OK writer, and I've been attached by the ear to my radio ever since I learned about CBC. I used to come home after school and do my math homework in front of the radio, listening to Brent Bambury host All In A Day from 4-6. Once I sent in a letter to the morning show and they laughed at my precociousness. Yeah, yeah, I'm sooo precious. Thanks. I was, obviously, the only one of my friends who considered CBC personalities to be celebrities.

My year of FYP love and JOUR1001 hate got me all turned around. Academia and journalism are definitely not friends. A Jschool in the top of the Academic Building of my thoroughly philosophy-centric school is weird. They wish they could put up a giant sign reading "A deadline is not a suggestion". They get shit done while the rest of the school, I dunno, contemplates the Good. Or deconstructs society as such. Or something.

After my year of journalism hate, I was, a little bit, wondering what I was doing in this program. I was wondering if perhaps I should launch myself away from reason and into the world of... something else. Classics, or English, or even Philosophy. Who needs a job? I want to learn! I will be a true academic, a stereotypical King's student, I will contemplate the Good all day and wear a "Plotinus da man" T-shirt. Wooo.

Then I went to my first JOUR2000 class. And started to get excited about radio equipment. And playing with video cameras. And I fell in love with my four profs who are all so enthusiastic and fabulous and put their home and cell numbers on the syllabus ("Call me, I'll always answer!"). Plus, they know their shit.

Next came my Intro to Narrative Nonfiction course, which I grinned through. My classmates must have thought I was insane. Every assignment, every reading, everything we have to do for that course makes me happy and excited. I ran to the Registrar's office and traded my elective for Ethics of Journalism. And all of this is really exciting.

I guess I picked the right program after all.