Friday, July 13, 2012

Going back to school at 43...

As you read in an earlier entry, I am indeed going back to school, I will be majoring in journalism with a mass communication emphasis.  By 2014, I hope to have a Degree in Liberal Arts in my hands, conferred from Tulsa Community College..

I could go on about how this is a milestone in my life, how it's an adventure that's 25 years in the making and all that but I won't.  That's too cliche'd even for me.

Some of you may have the bleakest desire to know why I'm deciding to do this.  How it basically came out of nowhere.  Well, it's coming from the unofficial "job" I have writing sports.  I've been covering sports for 3 years now for a local news website.  It began as a paying activity which dwindled to an unpaid gig, but I still do it, figuring if my stuff gets published someone might see it and maybe give me a chance to make it a career.

About a year and a half into the job the realization dawned on me that if I had some sort of education that would refine what is essentially my "art" then maybe I could hedge my bets a bit.  So when the opportunity presented itself, in this case an unceremonius departure from a hellish workplace, I decided to give it a shot. 

I am very critical of my own writing as a rule.  This volume you are reading will go through many edits, deletions and I may even come to the point that I will close the laptop, go to bed and finish it later...or not finish it at all.  This is in start contrast to what I was when I was younger, which was a kid who had the gift of the written word and wasn't ashamed to put it on paper.  Ironic that my first paying writing job was on the internet, where no paper is involved.

The journey to this point did not really begin three years ago.  It began 11 years ago whe I was offered the chance to write for a printed monthly called Just Hockey.  I got a press pass to cover the team with mainly feature articles, nothing on-the-spot like a game recap or anything.  Naturally with a 15-day deadline cycle the press pass was mainly used  to stand by the boards and shoot pictures which was fun, but oddly unsatisfying.  So I moved to the row.

What's great about writing is that it's so free.  Lately I have been thumbing throguh the biographies of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow and the thing tha strikes me is that they made their living as journalists before they were TV newsmen.  Cronkite was known at one time as the most trusted man in America and though I doubt I could ever aspire to be that level in my future work I can set my goal accordingly.

In a little over a month, the journey begins.

No comments:

Post a Comment