As I write this, I'm a little over three months away from graduation, and sometimes I feel as though I still haven't learned a damn thing. In three months, the bubble will burst, and I'll be thrust out into the real world kicking and screaming, and these columns will be only the tooth-and-nail marks I leave in my wake. I have absolutely no idea what I'll do when I leave Dartmouth. That world-as-your-oyster range of possibility, that wide-openness of opportunity it's about five percent breathtakingly exciting and 95 percent mind-numbingly horrific. It isn't just that I don't have a job; it's that I don't even have any idea about what type of job I'd like to have. I can't think of anything that would make me happy.
This late in the game, being as clueless and lost as I am should make me miserable and paranoid. But I've always been miserable and paranoid, so the vague wave of nausea that washes over me, filling my waking hours with a suffocating, all-consuming fear -- its familiarity is almost comforting by now. If I've failed to use my time at college to "find myself" or discover what I'm good at and what I'd be interested in doing for the rest of my life, at least I've figured out what I'm not good at and what I'd never be interested in.
High up on the depressingly long list of things I could never be is a journalist. This might seem a little odd considering that many of you know me only through my words on these pages; I exist for you primarily in a decidedly journalistic environment. But -- and this isn't news to any of you -- just because something's in The Dartmouth doesn't make it journalism. Journalism's a funny thing, especially at the college level. Recent events and their coverage -- or lack thereof -- have caused people to both praise and criticize The Dartmouth's writers and editors for their "journalistic integrity." People talk about newspaper ethics and the objective, informative and impersonal role of the media. They make mention of mission statements and principles and responsibilities. The thing is, this is a small college community and while that might not change anything for the newspaper and its goals, it certainly changes things for the students (the audience, presumably, for whom the newspaper exists). A newspaper seeks information, facts, truths.
But truths don't always readily translate into 10-point fonts and vivid pull-quotes. Our Dartmouth experience is worth more than a few bitter 800-word diatribes (although the realization of this hasn't stopped me from writing them). What happens here cannot and should not be reduced to mere text about systems and institutions and administrations and countless other faceless abstractions. Our daily lives cannot be contained within the margins of our daily paper. What "The D" and other newspapers attempt to do is convey life, truth and meaning through newsprint, blurbs and captions. Clearly, this is not something that can be done, which is why the only truly redeeming aspect of any paper is its crossword puzzle.
My columns are jokes. As such, they're occasionally tasteless and often fall flat. They are very much a part of the problem and not at all a solution. Whatever faults I have as a columnist, however, I'd be even worse as a journalist. Journalists need to go out in the field. They need to gather quotes and data. They need to interact with people, something I don't do well. The fact that I get more of my quotes from dead authors than fellow students should be no surprise to anyone who has ever struggled to engage me in meaningful conversation (while I'm sober). Journalists also need to be succinct. They need to get across the greatest amount of information in the smallest amount of space. They need to think in clear, straight lines. I can't do that. I never fully develop my thoughts, I never attempt to support my claims (usually I abort them with some meaningless digression or parenthetical insertion). It could be my "style," or a reflection of the way my mind works, but it's probably really nothing more than an avoidance technique. If you make a statement and then endlessly digress from it, you put yourself out of harm's way by never really climbing up on the soapbox you drag out in front of the hostile crowd.
Journalists also need to be principled people. They're bound by an obligation to specific truths, which can be, in many ways, subjective. Yet they also need to believe in a commitment to objectivity, which only really exists in abstract. This confluence of abstract and specific, objective and subjective is what makes journalism tricky. Yes, The Dartmouth is a newspaper and as such it has certain journalistic responsibilities. But everyone who works on "The D" is a person and it's frustrating to see people lose sight of what's actually important -- to believe so much in principles that they stop believing in people.
And here we are again, at the end of my word count and I still haven't said any of the things I really wanted to say. I have a funny feeling that's kind of how my life's going to turn out; I'll be on my death bed somewhere, talking in circles, running out of words, never really saying anything. But I also get the feeling that, somehow, that'll be okay.