Rambling Rhodes

Stress

Sometime during my fourth year of college, I came to the realization that my pursuit of a teaching/English degree just wasn't my bag.

The English part was my bag, mind you; I've always just had an innate grasp of English, probably because my mother is an English teacher, so I was brought up in a household that tut-tutted me whenever I said "can I" when I should have said "may I," and the word "ain't" was frowned upon like dog poop on new carpet.

It was the teaching angle that I couldn't accept. I entered college with a nebulous idea of what I wanted to be, so I just kind of glommed onto the career my parents had chosen. Then, one day, as I sat in class and gave a smarmy response to a professor, it dawned on me: I don't want to teach entire classes filled with students who are exactly like myself.

So, in the early months of my fourth year of college, I switched gears and started to pursue a degree that best matched up with the credits I had already earned. As luck would have it, that degree was mass communications/journalism.

I always had an ability to write, a skill I learned to hate during high school, because everyone kept asking me to write papers and book reports for them. It wasn't until college, when I realized I could charge $20 or so per paper, that I started to understand that being able to write could actually earn me money.

So, journalism and I just kind of found each other by accident. I had English and writing strengths, and those happened to be core components of journalism. Go figure. Sure, it meant a fifth year of college, but whatever.

As if by fate, during the early winter months of my fifth year of college, one of my roommates started banging a news editor of the local daily newspaper, the Winona Daily News. Come November, she mentioned to me that the paper was looking for a newbie reporter to write obituaries, police reports and other menial reporting duties. It was a three day a week job, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., at $5.25 an hour.

Since then, I've been a writer. I write copy. It's what I'm good at. It's what I'm comfortable with. I research, I interview, and I write. I'm not particularly organized, and I'm terrible at managing people. I've traditionally been a loner going all the way back to high school. When I had to work in a group in college, I'd often tell the other group members that I'd do everything, because I was the only one I trusted to get things done. Not surprisingly, they were fine with that.

Now, suddenly, I find myself in this managing editor position, a position that simply doesn't play to any of my strengths and exposes all of my weaknesses. I'm supposed to manage people I've never met, and keep on them about getting me articles. I'm supposed to plan magazine content, and stay meticulously organized along the way. In other words, I'm completely out of my element here, and there's apparently nothing I can do about it.

In short, I'm stressed the fuck out.

Not that anyone really should care about any of this. I'm just sayin'.

Posted by Ryan at May 10, 2005 10:22 AM