Tuesday, June 1, 2010

How quickly passion turns into apathy

In 2004, I started college. As most students, I was an idealistically passionate almost-19 year old. I changed my major three times I day I enrolled. I finally settled on journalism.

The reason was that I was extremely passionate -- about anything and everything. I would fight you tooth and nail until you believed like I did -- which coincidentally didn't usually happen. At the time, I thought of journalism as columnists who expressed their opinions and tried to sway the readers. I quickly learned that the art of journalism was actually the opposite. In fact, in journalism, you aren't allowed to have an opinion at all for fear of coming out biased. And after four years of journalism training, and the subsequent year and a half as a newspaper reporter, I can safely say the passion has been beaten right out of me.

That's not to say I'm not passionate about things -- my job, my boyfriend, my favorite college football team, my family -- all these things I love (in no particular order) and will fight to defend them each. It's all the rest of the stuff -- anything I don't have an immediate invested interest in.

What are my thoughts on Obama's health care plan? The new abortion laws in Oklahoma? Al Gore is getting a divorce? Eh. I don't know. I don't know enough about it to make an informed decision and thus, formulate my opinion.

I have become what I consider maybe the worst sin out there: Ignorant. Stupidity is forgivable. You can't change who you are. But to refuse to inform yourself about your surroundings...now that's unforgivable. That's lazy. And that's why the world hates Americans. Unfortunately, that's me.

So what's my solution? I'm going back to my original plan. I'll be hitting you with a weekly column via this blog. From politics to the latest celebrity faux pas...Welcome to Tuesday's with Jessica.

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