As I am approaching the end of my time in Carlyle, I have been thinking a lot about being a journalist. More specifically I have been thinking about being a young 21 year old out in the real world. I did everything younger than most people and so it only felt natural to get a real job right out of college. Being in any career as a young adult has its ups and downs, but being the media for me has more of them. I guess this is my last what ticks me off and what doesn't tick me off before I say my farewells in my next column. By the time the next one is read I will already have been gone a week, so I figured I would humour all my readers with some of my anger one last time. I went into Photojournalism knowing that in some ways it was a dying field. I applied to a school that was quite honest about the shortage of staff jobs in Canada. The majority of graduates were relying on freelance jobs to survive, and quite frankly living on KD. My program would start off with 90 or so students the first year and by second semester the numbers dropped to under 50, by second year, at least in my year we were down to about 30 graduates. The high stress rates of a program that is intended for University, is squashed into two years of never ending work. I can still remember the first day of college, hearing that 75% of the program's graduates who had never smoked before, left nicotine addicts. Knowing this wouldn't be me as I have never even touched alcohol, I knew I would have to find other ways to deal.A semester into school I left due to health problems that I probably never would have had symptoms for if I hadn't been under stress. Keep in mind I graduated high school at 16, so by second semester I was still barely 17-years-old. So I left school and was told that the majority of students who leave never come back. A year later (the only available time to start second semester again), I was back in front of the same teachers, with different classmates. Now I have also been told by some journalists that it is best to stick to yourself and not give away your story ideas, but I am a fairly social person so that never worked for me. Instead I formed a strong group of colleagues and we worked as a team. Again this ticked many people off, yet I was pretty happy. College meant many sleepless nights and coaching vulnerable students through meltdowns. Even in college being young made things difficult at times, the majority of the students in my program were over 25, and I had to grow up quite quickly to fit in. During my first year I often found myself hanging out with high school students as in Ontario the majority graduate at 18 and I was still younger than them. When it came time for internship time in order to graduate, it was pretty difficult to get papers and magazines to take a 19-year-old seriously. Many assumed I was looking for work experience in high school and when seeing my credentials didn't always believe them and opted for the older students. This problem hasn't gone away since graduating. While working at the Observer, I have had several people assume I was the summer intern. Looking younger than my age has never helped as, at 21, I still pretty much look 15, darn that baby face gene! I hear I will be thankful for this feature when I am in my 40's, I sure hope so. All of this ticks me off but I do acknowledge that being female in my field is often easier than being a male. Going to a park and photographing children isn't always as simple for males. Unfortunately due to child pornography many people are sexist in this way. There is always a flip side to the gender roll however and when I approached musicians to do tour documentaries with them it was very difficult to find bands willing to take a young female along. Being a journalist is going to be a road of ups and downs in the future as well but it is one I look forward to. The challenges are what make my job exciting, and I wouldn't grow as a person without them. If I have to live on the Mr. Noodles diet once in a while, I am willing to do so to be happy. I can't picture myself being away from media, being away from people. There's no guarantees that anything is going to work out and all we can do is try the shoe on and see if it fits. If I have to assure a few more people that I am not a summer student at my next few jobs, I am pretty sure that will be worth the rewards I receive working in my field and the people I meet.
