I was a Journalism and Media Studies student at university. Not for the full duration of my time in tertiary education, but for an impressionable enough period to write about its ongoing influence.
The first thing I remember from those formative years was the idea that original ideas do not exist. Confused and narrow-minded like most twenty-year-olds are, I took this as a challenge and set out to construct my own reality. What resulted was a decade-long attempt to escape the very prison that sustained the idea ME.
You can experiment with what you are, but you cannot escape what you are.
Seventeen years on, I accept that original ideas do not exist. Our ideas are inextricably linked to the lives and work of those who’ve gone before us, and we cannot take full credit for what we produce, and hence for what we consider ourselves to be.
The second more insidious lesson came via Narrative. Laden with pride-ridden hubris at such a young age (others might call it stupidity), a classmate and I decided we were above our Narrative course and instead spent our afternoons getting lathered at the local.
Do I regret this? I don’t know. Due to me missing this course, I subsequently became obsessed with Narrative in a way that any university professor would be proud of. I’ve come to see that it is the backbone of geosocial communication, a veritable chisel that crafts the myths and legacies and untruths of nations and the powers puppeteering them.
To read between the lines can, at times, feel like a curse.
Journalism is more pertinent now than ever before. As a species (and as a planet), we are indebted to the fact that we live, and the self-reflection provided for us through sound journalistic practice is essential to making sense of a sometimes senseless world.