Why I'm Doing This.

For some time now, I’ve been meaning to put down in writing the reasons for my somewhat abrupt and surprising decision to attend graduate school for journalism. The trouble was that I didn’t really know how to explain it at first. This is not to say the decision was impulsive or that I hadn’t thought it through beforehand. In fact, I put a great deal of thought into it-- agonized over it, really-- and I knew I had good reasons for doing it. I also had a vague sense or a general idea of what those reasons were, but articulating them in a way that would make sense to other people proved challenging. So I will do my best to make this whole thing coherent, but I can make no guarantees.

I first started thinking about going back to school to get a graduate degree in journalism sometime last fall (2007), while I was working for a collection agency called West Asset Management. Even though I had only been there since July, and I would wind up working there until the end of January ‘08, I already knew the job wasn’t for me, so I had started thinking about what my next job move would be. In this time period, I started writing a story/novel in which the main character was a sports reporter. I didn’t get very far into the story before abandoning it (although I may return to it at some point; it had some promise). An unintended side effect of working on this story was that, by putting myself in the main character’s shoes, I realized that being a reporter was something I would probably enjoy. Even though journalism is not creative, at least not to the same extent as writing fiction or screenplays, it would still be writing, and as far as day jobs go, it would beat the hell out of trying to convince ignorant deadbeats to pay their student loan debts.

So I started doing some research online about graduate programs in journalism, casually at first, and then more seriously as the idea really took hold in my mind. It turned out that there are not a large number of schools that offer master’s degrees in journalism, at least not in New York State, or in the Northeast in general. Considering I had just recently moved back to New York after four years in LA, I was not eager to do the long-distance thing again, and wanted to stay relatively close to home. I discovered that Syracuse University, which is only about a two-hour drive from where I grew up, offered the kind of program I was looking for (print journalism), and their entire communications school is held in high regard. I considered a couple of other schools-- Columbia in NYC and Emerson in Boston are the two that immediately come to mind-- but in the end I decided it was going to be Syracuse or nothing. I only applied to one school.

The application process took quite a while, especially since I had not taken the GRE. So I registered for that, took the exam in December (and crushed it), and started contacting former professors for letters of recommendation in the meantime. I also visited the SU campus for an open house at the communications school (Newhouse) in November, and liked what I saw.

While all this was going on, I warmed to the idea of going back to school, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of working as a journalist. Still, I took a wait-and-see attitude. I might not even get into the program, and even if I did, I would want to know what kind of financial aid package they were offering before I decided to accept or decline. And, of course, if some other full-time job came along that would pay well and wouldn’t kill me with boredom, I could always toss the idea of going to grad school and just start a career.

I found out that I had been accepted in the middle of March, but I wouldn’t find out about financial aid for another month or so, and I didn’t need to make a decision until the end of April or the beginning of May-- I forget exactly when the deadline was. So I put off the decision for a while, though I continued to turn it over in my mind. By this time I had left the collection agency and was working as a substitute teacher. This was a much more pleasant occupation than the previous one, but the pay was terrible, and it wasn’t something I was in love with. It did help me figure out that teaching would not be the right profession for me, not long-term.

In April the school offered me a scholarship. It was a pretty good chunk of change, but still only covered about 25% of the tuition, and then I would obviously need to come up with living expenses on top of that, so I was still looking at a very substantial bill. In other words, the scholarship was something that pushed me in the direction of going back to school, but it wasn’t the kind of offer that made it a no-brainer.

Still undecided, and with the deadline drawing ever closer, things got more complicated.

I had taken some civil service tests to qualify for several state jobs in October, and was now receiving a lot of canvass letters about job openings. These weren’t offers, exactly, but the letters were to notify me that there were openings, to find out whether or not I was interested, and to set up interviews if I did have interest. My test scores put me at or near the top of the list of potential applicants, so I thought it was a virtual certainty that if I started interviewing for these positions, I would get offered a job sooner or later-- probably sooner.

At some point in April, as I was running out of time to make my decision, I got a call from my friend Cory’s father, who is a pretty high-ranking official with Citibank (or, actually, I think Citigroup is the name of the corporation. I’ll just call them Citi to simplify). They had an opening in their Buffalo office that he thought I would be good for, and he encouraged me to apply. It wasn’t anything big, just an entry level job, but from everything I’ve heard, Citi takes good care of their employees, and with my work ethic and abilities I was confident I would be able to advance there (or anywhere else, really).

So it was decision time-- the lady or the tiger. Do I start interviewing and applying for these jobs and take the best one I can get, and embark on a stable but mundane career, or do I roll the dice with grad school, which would sort of set my whole life back a year or two and put me much further into debt, but would also potentially lead to a career I would find more interesting and rewarding?

Well, I thought long and hard about it and decided-- obviously-- to go for the master’s in journalism.

Okay, so that was the easy part. That was the chronology of what happened. Now comes the hard part, as I try to explain why and how I made this decision. And it’s probably more complex than you’re thinking.

I should start by saying that I actually did the opposite of what I wanted to do. Why the hell would I do that? Yeah, good question. Deep down, I really wanted to take the path of least resistance, the safer path, the road more traveled. I would field my job offers, take the one that was the most lucrative, finally move out of my parents’ house and get my own place, start working a real job, and be completely out of debt and building up savings within a few years (I had some student loan debt from my undergraduate years, but not a lot. My parents helped me out a ton with paying for college, plus I had a half tuition scholarship and some other scholarships, as well). Sure, I wasn’t really interested in any of these jobs I was thinking about, but I could live with that. I could deal with doing something mundane and dull, so long as it wasn’t terribly unpleasant. I had never really cared about getting a sense of enjoyment or fulfillment from my job. To me, a job was a paycheck and that’s all it was. The way I saw it, you shouldn’t be drawing your happiness or satisfaction in life from what you do for a living, but from what you do when you’re on your own time-- your relationships with your friends and family, your hobbies and interests, and so on.

When I was a kid, I always thought I was destined for something great, or at least something unusual. I couldn’t imagine ever being happy with a “normal” life, and I sort of pitied all those people who work regular, everyday jobs that aren’t weird or exciting (99% of the population, in other words). I could never see myself being happy with that.

Yet, after being out of college for a year, a normal life and a normal job were exactly what I wanted. I just wanted to work 40 hours a week, make a decent salary, have my own apartment, maybe a dog, and spend my free time hanging out with my friends and family, reading interesting books, and maybe writing a few books of my own if I worked up the ambition. It didn’t sound thrilling, but it sounded... good, you know?

But there was still something going on deep down, something in the recesses of my brain that I couldn’t quite shut up. It was this sense that I would be taking the coward’s way out, waving the white flag, turning my back on the wider world. And, for some reason, I felt like I couldn’t let myself do that. No matter how much I wanted to.

This next part is probably going to sound arrogant and weird and possibly ridiculous, but I admit that I have a narcissistic streak in me, and I’ve come to terms with that.

I think it’s safe to say that I’ve always had a lot of potential. And for that reason, it’s always been my perception that people expect me to do great things, and I had started to expect the same. As any pop culture junkie could tell you, Spider-Man 2 taught us that, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Well, I sort of think the same thing goes for potential. I didn’t ask for whatever abilities I have, but I have them, and I think I’m supposed to use them for something.

It’s strange, but I feel as though I have aged in reverse over the past five years or so. I’ve actually become less jaded and more idealistic as I’ve gotten older. When I was in my teens, I didn’t really believe in anything. When I looked at political issues, it always seemed to me like there was no right answer and no wrong answer. No matter what we decided to do about a certain problem, a lot of people were going to be pissed off, a lot of people were going to get screwed over, and a lot of politicians were going to make a lot of money. Why bother thinking about politics, I reasoned, when all of the options were really the same. That sort of thinking is why, to this day, I have never cast a vote in any election other than a school budget vote. But that is about to change. I’m registered to vote in Onondaga County (where Syracuse is located) and I’ll be heading out to the polls on election day 2008. Of course, I’m still of the opinion that my vote in the presidential election does not matter at all since it is a foregone conclusion that Obama will win New York State, but I have learned to embrace the symbolic value in casting a vote in a presidential election. For the record, it still bothers me that, unless you live in a swing/battleground state, casting a vote for president only has symbolic value. The electoral college really needs to go away.

Okay, I need to rein myself in and not go off on tangents. This isn’t about politics. The point I was trying to make is that I believe in things now. Some things, anyway. I don’t know what brought about this change, but I’m glad it happened. I’m not idealistic or foolish enough to think I can single-handedly save the world with my words or anything like that, but I believe that through my work I will be able to leave a mark, I will be able to change some things for the better. That’s why I’m going to work so hard at it, why I’m going to dedicate myself to it so fully.

Even though I’m only six weeks into my master’s program, I already feel like I’m more committed to this, that I’m more engaged with it, than I’ve ever been about anything. I haven’t done much this summer besides write and work and try to become more informed about the wider world. And the weird thing is I don’t really mind. I feel like I could keep going like this indefinitely, doing nothing but work, and I would be happy.

I realize that’s a complete departure from my earlier reasoning that your satisfaction in life should come from everything you do outside work, and that your job is just the thing you do so you can afford to live your life. I am unable to explain what brought on this reversal. Maybe it was just a natural part of getting older, or maybe it’s that I found a career path that really interests me. For most of my young life (all of high school and college, at least) I suffered from chronic boredom. I think this was actually the main cause of the problems I had with depression and anxiety a few years ago. I just didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. Now I’ve found... well, something I’m interested in. I almost wrote “I’ve found my calling,” but I don’t like that phrase. For one thing, it’s an overused cliché. But it also suggests that everyone has one true calling, which is a notion I reject as easily as the idea that everyone has one true soul mate.

I mean, maybe I would have lived an exciting, happy, and profitable life as a crab fisherman off the Alaskan coast (I’ve never watched that “Deadliest Catch” show, but the promos make it look bad-ass), or maybe if I had decided to go into comedy/acting I would have wound up being Conan O’Brien’s sidekick on the Tonight Show when he takes over in 2009, and I would have been known as the 21st century Ed McMahon (minus the foreclosure). But we’ll never know because I never tried to do those things. I am trying to do this, and I think it was a good decision.

So, you might be asking yourself, what is it that I hope to accomplish in my career, and where do I see myself in the future? Well, that’s another thing that’s changed recently, even since I first came to Syracuse. I originally saw myself working in a branch of journalism that would not be all that consequential. I thought I might like to be a sports writer. Covering the Bills and/or the Sabres for the Buffalo News (or the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, or whatever) would be sort of a dream job for me. And if I excelled there, maybe I could end up covering sports for something bigger, like a national magazine or ESPN.com or something like that. I would also be interested in doing film criticism. And one of my biggest inspirations when I decided to become a journalist was Chuck Klosterman. I would love to do what he does, and comment on various facets of pop culture (or, at this point it might be more accurate to say Klosterman writes about “culture.” His more recent articles have had more of a serious bent, particularly his latest column for Esquire, which I believe was one of the most sober pieces I have ever read by CK).

Don’t get me wrong, I may very well wind up doing one of those things, or perhaps all of them at different points in my career, and I think I would still enjoy writing about all those subjects. But I’ve also started giving thought to writing about things that are considered more serious-- politics, international affairs, social issues. Now, when I think about whose career I most want mine to resemble, I don’t think about Klosterman or sports writers like Bill Simmons, Peter King, or Vic Carucci (although I admire all those people a great deal. Well, maybe not Simmons). I think about Tom Wolfe. Wolfe first came to prominence as an extraordinarily creative and influential journalist, and wrote a number of nonfiction books that made a lasting impact-- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, et al. Later in his career he started publishing fiction, and wrote what I consider one of the truly Great American Novels, The Bonfire of the Vanities (A Man in Full and I Am Charlotte Simmons aren’t half bad, either, but Bonfire is in a class all by itself). Just because I’m now becoming a journalist does not mean that I am walking away from creative writing (in fact, as I write this essay, I am preparing to launch a new creative writing project. I’m not giving out details just yet, but this will be happening soon, so just sit tight). Maybe I can do what Wolfe has done, and succeed at both. That would be the best case scenario.

It has occurred to me that maybe I could have accomplished these things without going to grad school. I know people who got their undergraduate degrees in English, just as I did, and wound up working for newspapers without getting a master’s in journalism. I also understand that you don’t need to have an official job as a journalist to research and write articles, to try to expose a truth that most people are not aware of. With the advent of citizen journalism, largely due to the internet and the popularity of blogging, everyone has a voice. Everyone is a journalist if they want to be. But being a professional gives you a certain credibility-- and a built-in audience-- that you don’t have if you’re trying to do it all independently. I could produce the best journalism in the world on this blog, but how are people going to find it? It would be inaccurate to say that being a professional journalist will give me a voice-- everybody already has a voice. But it might give me a very large megaphone.

When I started my classes this summer, I didn’t really know what to expect from myself. I knew I could write, but I didn’t know if I could report. I’m not shy, but I’m also not the most outgoing person in the world, and one of my biggest questions was whether or not I would be able to interview people effectively. I still consider my interviewing style something I need to improve, but I was able to do it well enough to produce some good articles for my summer writing class. Some very good articles, if I may be permitted to pat myself on the back. Obviously, as this year goes on I’m only going to get better and better, and I’d like to think I’m not bad to begin with.

For most of my life, people have had more confidence in me than I’ve had in myself. I’m the biggest critic of my own writing (despite the self-congratulatory statements made in the last paragraph), and when I was struggling with the uncertainty of life post-college, I found it difficult to believe people’s assurances that I would eventually figure out what I wanted to do and that everything would work out. I didn’t know if I would figure out what I wanted to do. There were times when I wondered if there was anything I really wanted to do. Maybe it was just in my personality to be an underachieving lazy bum for the rest of my life. I started to hate myself a little.

Fortunately, those worries are all behind me now. I am now certain that I can do this, that I want to do this, and that I will do this. Going to grad school was absolutely the right decision. I finally got one of the big decisions right, and that feels good. I still have a long way to go, but I am growing more and more certain that I am going to be extraordinarily good at this, and that I am going to rise far, and that I am going to rise fast (because of my high yeast content. What? Where the hell did that joke come from? I think I’m getting tired. Ah, what the hell, I’m gonna leave the yeast joke. This paragraph needed some levity). If I continue writing this blog for a long time (years, we’re talking), and I see no reason why I wouldn’t, I think it’s going to turn into a chronicle of my rise to the top of my profession. So stay tuned. I think the next decade or so is going to be a profoundly awesome experience.

Well, there you have it. In a rambling, circumlocutious way, I think this should have answered a lot of your questions about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask. I obviously am not opposed to writing about myself (there’s that pesky narcissism again).

Lastly, I want to thank all my family and friends-- anyone reading this, really-- for being so supportive. There were some days (months) when I thought my future looked rather bleak. I might not have gotten through that time, or had the courage to take the plunge and go to grad school, without the support of all the wonderful people in my life. If I ever accomplish anything great, much of the credit will be yours. Unless you’re just some random person who stumbled onto my blog. In that case, I don’t owe you anything. But thanks for reading, man.