The Red and Black

Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Opinions

JESSICA BURGHAUS

I'm feeling really screwed right now. All my life, my teachers told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. With that notion, I developed many ideas on how I wanted to live my life.

In kindergarten, I wanted desperately to be a ballerina. I worked very hard at skipping, leaping and not screaming at the excruciating pain when my mother pulled my hair into a bun and poked my scalp with pins.

Many tears and ripped tights later, I realized dancing was not for me. When I was 6, my parents got into NASCAR and took me to a few races. Seeing the blur of cars as they flew by was exhilarating.

That evening, I announced to my mother that I was going to be the first woman stock-car driver.

To make a long story short, it didn't work out, mostly because my parents wouldn't let me drive anything larger than my Polly Pocket bicycle.

I began to explore other areas. In seventh grade, I worked hard in school and received the highest grade point average in my class for the year. Asked why I had made such an effort to reach this accomplishment, I explained that I was going to study law at Harvard.

Unfortunately, I can't maintain an argument longer than two seconds, or talk in front of a group of people without stammering and blushing. Upon hearing my latest ambition, people actually laughed in my face.

The following year, when I was 13, the school enrolled me in a journalism course.

The teacher was strange. He dimmed the lights and locked the trailer doors before each class. When he lectured, he whispered, and when you asked a question, he yelled in your face. His hands constantly shook and he was always dropping his dry-erase markers onto the floor.

He inspired me. I finally knew what I wanted to do - become a reporter and write for a newspaper.

I haven't changed my mind since. But now I hear newspapers are getting rid of their reporters. People don't want to read newspapers anymore. They want to watch television or sit at the computer.

I feel dismayed at this new shift in our society. There is something romantic about holding a newspaper - about seeing your name in print. I like the ideas of typewriters and faded paper and how the ink gets all over your hands and ends up on everything else afterwards.

I'm getting the feeling that whatever career path I happen to choose will become more and more cluttered with new problems and dilemmas the farther I travel upon it.

I'm developing this picture in my head.

It's me, 10 years older, living on the streets and off of Easy Mac and disposable cameras.

Still, I don't think I'll change my major. It's not so much the fact that I'm not good at anything else, but at this rate, I won't end up with any kind of degree.

- Jessica Burghaus is a sophomore from Snellville and a pre-journalism major.

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