Revelation

Over the summer, in 4804, I was always curious about what happened behind those closed doors in the meeting room. It was obvious that they deliberated on our stories, because we would wait impatiently for the return of the project managers to tell us if we had the green light or not. But phrases like “I fought for your story” or “They just really didn’t like the idea” always made me assume that the happenings in the room were dark and mysterious, and there was a kind of pitched battle between the students, their representatives (project managers), and the teachers.

I finally had the opportunity to attend one of these sessions. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have been there, it wasn’t my turn on the rotation and I had been confused about when I was actually supposed to come to class, so I just said to hell with sleep and came anyway, but I was there. It was nothing lie what I had led myself to assume it was. There was no shouting, there weren’t voices coming from all sides, there were no fist-fights. Calmly, the professors sought ways of making stories work. And they found them, for every team.

Now, this isn’t to say that things won’t get heated later in the semester, when reporting groups aren’t getting a free pass because it’s week one, but I was still a little shocked, and if I’m honest, a little disappointed. Everything was quite subdued, and the process moved like clockwork, which is ironic seeing as it took more time than the allotted hour to go over all the pitches.

And it makes me wonder if this is how its supposed to be. Is this how my life will be ruled for the next decade? Some people will calmly decide if my story is worth my effort to report? It might seem a little dramatic, but it’s a reasonable question. I don’t know which I would rather have, the screaming and fighting I had always imagined, or the orderly triage I saw. I assume this class is here to teach us not only how this process works, but how reporters are handled. I’m quickly seeing I don’t much want to be a reporter… editor seems much, much better.