Journalism 101

KUALA LUMPUR, 24/11/09 - I woke up this morning after 4 hours of sleep ready to face the trials that lay ahead of me. I had spent the night reading disorganized and redundant notes on journalism as a subject.

I arrive in college half an hour before the paper, only to realize how unprepared I was at the sight of all 4 of my fellow classmates studying in the Library.

I sneak out for a smoke and keep telling myself "It's gonna be fine". Journalism is after all a subject about writing capabilities and I don't doubt for a second that I can write properly, if not effectively.

The time had come for me to sit and face the music and I did. I was whizzing through Multiple Choice Questions. Then I hit a brick wall. I had come to the short answer questions and the 2 essay questions that later became my down fall.

I sat and pondered the questions to no avail and decided to hand up an empty sheet of paper. I'm not the kind of person to kid myself and pretend I know shit by sitting there and thinking "If I think harder it will come". Its simple really, if you don't know it, you don't know it.

That decision was not a decision to give up, but a decision to be honest to myself and have the courage to say, I really don't know this crap.

What really happened? I was extremely angry at myself for not having studied hard enough for this paper.

Then it dawned on me. Really, what is Journalism? Is the question "What does DAD stand for and elaborate on it." really what makes a journalist good?

If you've noticed, we now live in a culture of examinations. If you fail a test, you're stupid. If you sit the whole week out at your desk studying and memorizing redundant crap, score an A on your paper, you're supposedly smart. Really? Is this the kind of society you'd want to grow up in. A society whereby you are judged based on paper qualifications.

Higher education has become so important to so many people that everybody seems, now, to be missing the whole point of a higher education.

Education has become a business.

What happened to the days when people learned through doing. Yes, the process maybe more tedious and time consuming, but which is better, the well seasoned blacksmith who has learned all tricks of the trade over 5 years of being a blacksmith, or the blacksmith who spent 5 years of his life in college reading books on being a blacksmith?

Which would you rather be?