I once had a writing professor who decried the rampant iPod usage in New York City. You miss out on hearing the world around you, she would say. There is where you’ll find inspiration. There is where you’ll find stories. Well, I have been iPod-less for a while (not by choice, but by my clever combination of clumsiness and poverty), so my commute is often subject to inspiration and stories whether I want them or not. The other day, as I headed out to my second ever day of (still fartless!) yoga, I was unintentional eavesdropper to an odd conversation.
The woman next to me was telling her friend about her CUNY School of Journalism application. She complained as she flipped through the pages. “They want us to answer all of these questions. Here, look at this. They want us to identify all of these.”
Well, I felt like I was in it to win it, so I peeked at her list. There were many blank spots. “Look at this, I don’t know who these people are!” The first three were all blank: Judith Miller, Tom DeLay and John Roberts. “Who is this? Tom DeLay. I don’t know who that is.” Now, I don’t necessarily believe that everyone needs to who Tom DeLay or, say, the current Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court are. But surely, the one group of people who absolutely should is journalism students, right? Am I crazy?
Full disclosure: if someone were to ask me who Judith Miller is, I would quickly and confidently answer, “oh, she was the mom on Who’s the Boss?” But, I am not applying to be a journalism major anywhere. And, if asked who Valerie Plume is, I would know. So there.
I mean, different people know different things. She did have something written for a lot of the other terms. For example, for “Derek Jeter” she had written “Yankees” and for “Darfur” she had written “hunger.” She gets points for concision. Too many writers today suffer from an intolerable, over-modified case of logorrhea and pretension—showing off for their readers that they know who Valerie Plume is (as if it is somehow impressive). Touché, subway lady.
But, I can’t help but wonder why she is even looking at a degree in journalism. Is that really what you’re drawn to? I mean, it’s not exactly a degree that opens a lot of doors (says the English major). What is your end goal? Maybe she intends to learn who Maureen Dowd is (another blank she asked her friend about). Maybe. But the way she said it, it was as if no one should care who Maureen Dowd is. Like a high-school student asking during a poetry lesson, “when are we ever going to use this?” (Answer: the ability to understand metaphoric language is essential to all forms of communication; the overarching skill of being able to read, understand, and reiterate the meaning of a text is necessary for any professional job; and engaging the imagination, that is, the metaphoric, allows any and all learning to occur, you little punk). She then took her application, folded it into quarters, and put it back into her purse.
Maybe I am just a big snob (true) and maybe she has some vision in mind in which a degree in journalism will be useful (it’s possible). I mean, there are plenty of celebrity news writers and whatnot that probably have no clue who Samuel Alito is and will happily live their lives not knowing. And they’ll probably make more money than I will and get to meet cool people like Maggie Gyllenhaal or Zooey Deschanel or that guy from Once. So maybe she has a point.
Or maybe, I just need to invest in a new iPod (donations are always welcome).
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