A Persistant Myth

There’s a persistent myth where university is concerned that, even if you don’t know what you want to do when you arrive, by the time you start your third year you will know exactly what you want to do with your life. What’s more, you will have a plan of exactly how to get there, right down to the job you will get when you graduate.

Yeah, no…

I am a third year, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. And most of my friends who are third years also have no clue. We are doing everything we can to figure it out – career service meetings, looking at post graduate degrees, the works – but I can’t imagine that come May I will have any better idea of what I want to do than I do now.

In fact, I think I can safely say that I have better idea of what I don’t want to do than of what I do. This may come as a surprise to some people, but I have realised that I don’t actually want to be a journalist. I love my degree, but not the idea of having to go out, talk to sources, collect stories and the like. It’s fun, and maybe one day I will go back to it. But right now, no. It’s not what I want to do.

What I want to know though, is why is there such an obsession with everyone knowing exactly what they want to do with their life. Sometimes it feels like being stuck in Soviet Russia, with their oppressive five year plans. My lecturers are telling me that I need to think about where I want to be in a year, then in five years, and then in ten.

What’s wrong with taking it a day at a time? With figuring out what you want to do at your own pace?  I like where I am right now, my life is going pretty well. Yes the concept of life after university is a little scary, but I am reasonably sure that in a year I will find myself in a house, with a job and a steady internet connection, even if that job isn’t in the field I want to be in.

It has something to do with my faith I think. I know that through all the challengers of the last few years, that God has not abandoned me. I know I wouldn’t have got to university without him, and I know that he will provide a job when I need one. He hasn’t let me down yet, and I don’t think he’s going to start soon.

Would I be happier if I knew exactly where I am going to be in a year? Quite possibly, I have that type of brain. But at the same time, I am looking forward to finding out. It’s going to be an adventure and one that I am very much looking forward to experiencing

A Chance for Reflection

In the HBO movie “Game Change” John McCain tells Sarah Palin not to get “co-opted by (Rush) Limbaugh and the other extremists,” warning her that they will “destroy the party if you let them.”

Apt words don’t you think?

As the United States recovers from the Government shut down and the fact that the Government  nearly defaulted on all its loans, the Republican Party needs to take this opportunity to do some serious soul searching, figure out what its priorities are, and think how it can avoid being wiped out during next year’s Midterm Elections.

Please understand I’m not saying that the Democrats are completely blameless. The Democratic Senate refusing to pass a House approved Budget Bill was one of the reasons for the shutdown. But the reason that the Democrats kept sending the bills back was because they were completely moronic. If the Democrats can be accused of anything, it’s realising that the word compromise doesn’t simply mean doing what the other person tells you all the time and acting accordingly. The rest of the blame lies solely with the GOP, or rather with the minority within the GOP that supports the Tea Party movement.

But come the Midterms and the majority are going to be paying the price for the actions of the minority. So before next year, I believe the GOP needs to do three things to win back public trust

1: Drive out the Tea Party

The Party of Eisenhower and Ford, the party of small government and low taxes, has been taken over by a bunch of small minded paleo-conservatives and religious extremists with a tenuous grasp of reality who believe that the best way to govern is by putting a gun to the country’s head. This cannot be allowed to continue. Bachman, Santorum, Cruz and the rest of their ilk, who spend their days parroting the lines fed to them by business interests and shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh, need to be driven out of the party and out of politics for good, using whatever means necessary to achieve this end.

 2: Sit down with the Speaker

I don’t believe that John Boehner is the villain of the piece. I think he got hijacked by his own Caucus and found himself unable to do anything but hold on for dear life. But that’s not acceptable from the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He is supposed to lead his party, not do what they tell him. Party grandees need to sit down with him and either tell him get his house in order, or ask for his resignation. Either way he needs to get his act together.

3: Listen to their Constituents.

While a small minority of Republican voters probably do agree with what the GOP has been doing, I can’t believe that the majority do.  Most of them are probably as annoyed as the rest of us. If the GOP is to have any hope of surviving then it needs to sit down with the people who vote for it and ask them what they want. It needs to build its party platform around its voters’ needs, and its voters’ views, not around the needs and views of big business. The lower house of Congress is called the House of Representatives for a reason.

Now I’m not saying that this will save the GOP. They may already be too far gone. But if they carry on as they are, then they are most certainly doomed.

 

 

Atmosphere is the Key

I’m not a huge fan of sport; I should say that right now. For me a nice evening in with a book, or a political debate on the telly is much more fun. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been very good at it, but I have never really understood what people see in sport.

Except sometimes I do.

As you may remember last weekend I went to Silverstone with my girlfriend and her family for the British Touring Car Championships. Now they are all massive motorsport fans and I am…..not. I get that it’s something they enjoy, but for me it’s just guys driving around a track for a couple of hours. But this time it was different. Seeing the cars rush past me, being able to walk through the pit lane, pick a car that I wanted to support and, yes, see a couple of major crashes. That made it fun. I finally saw what everyone else saw in motorsport. But it wasn’t the racing itself, but the atmosphere of Silverstone that made it fun.

But atmosphere is always helpful I find. It’s the reason I have also enjoyed the few football matches I have gone to see – can’t stand the game, but take me to the Emirates and you would never know it. But I don’t think it’s something that is just true of sport. The atmosphere in a place or a situation can do a lot to influence how we think and feel.

Take churches for example. A person may not be very religious or even religious at all, but I suspect that most people will admit that if you take them to a very old and very impressive Church – Westminster Abbey say – they will feel something. They may not understand what it is they are feeling, but they will feel something.

On the other hand if you go to something that you thought you enjoyed, but all the people there are clearly miserable, then shortly afterwards you are probably going to start feeling miserable yourself. We are all influenced by the atmosphere in the places we go. In quiet places we are quiet, in happy situations we are happy, in sad ones we are sad. No one is going to start making funny noises at a funeral for example.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to Silverstone. As I said above, I’m not a motorsport fan, and while I hoped that I would enjoy the experience I wouldn’t have been surprised if I hadn’t. I have other things I could have been doing. But luckily for me I did enjoy it. And not just because of the people I was with, but because I was in a place filled to the brim with people, all excited, angry, happy, upset and overjoyed as their teams succeeded or failed. It was kind of like a virus; once you were there you just got infected with enthusiasm. You couldn’t help but enjoy yourself.

I probably won’t watch it on telly though.

 

 

Leap into the Unknown

Being a journalist is all about being willing to try new things. After all, if we stay in our little bubbles and only write or talk about what we know, then yes, we may write insanely good copy regarding French parliamentary elections, but we will have a very limited career. In fact, we probably won’t have a job.

As my journalism lecturers have told us over and over during the past three years, the best journalists are ones with a wide range of experiences and interests. It’s why we are encouraged to seek a placement that is outside of what we might be comfortable with. It’s actually why we are encouraged to seek a placement in the first place. When we are applying for jobs in a year’s time, if our CV shows that all we have written about is chocolate bars and all our work experience is with the local chocolate factory, we might get a job there. But good luck getting a job at the BBC.

And as a writer as well as a journalist, having a wider range of experiences helps my skills grow. We are always told to write what we know. The more I know, the more I will be able to write about. And the more experiences I have the more stuff will bleed through into my writing, and make it more interesting to read.

However if you ask me, this is something that should apply to everyone, not just journalists or writers – or in my case a prospective journalist and writer. A web designer whose only hobby is developing more web programs, will probably be brilliant at any job in that field. But they will also be boring as heck, and not a person that you would want to sit next to at a dinner party. But on the other hand, a web designer with a passing interest in science, or history, or comic books, is going to be someone well worth talking to.

Our hobbies help us become more rounded people and also help us increase our social circles. As a journalist I have obviously met some very interesting people. But it was as a fan of CS Lewis’ Narnia series that I met some of my closest online friends - friends who helped me get through a very dark period of my life. I wouldn’t have met these people if I had focused all my time and energy on learning about politics, or economics or what have you. My hobbies, and interests are a vital part of who I am, and by doing things I haven’t done before I grow as a person.

That’s why by the time you read this I will have come back from a weekend at Silverstone, with my girlfriend and her family, watching the British Touring Car Championship. I know a little less than absolutely nothing about motorsport, and I’m sure I will have spent the weekend going, “Huh?” and “Whose that?” and “What just happened?” But I’m also sure that I will have learnt something new.

I’ll be sure to tell you about it next week.