Monday, November 29, 2010

Do something you love

My sister is currently in the process of applying to university to study journalism. We both were checking out a list of universities and I pointed to Brown University, her eyes lit up and she hurried onto their website to check out their majors. ‘Anthropology, Space Music, Ethnic studies...’ it had everything but journalism or communication studies, but still, Brown is Brown and it has an amazing reputation but my sister sat there shaking her head and clicked the [x] without another look. I was suddenly curious, why had she set her heart upon studying journalism, and her response struck a chord with me. My sister has many concrete principals which she refuses to go against such as respecting animals, helping others and being a social critic – her essays always relate to depravity in some way. She is a fervent fundraiser for the WWF and stresses the importance of ethics within the meat and other industries involving animals, and so has wrapped much of her heart into this particular vocation. “Through journalism I feel as though I can focus my passion for these concepts into the lives of others.” Freud once said that literature and art were the substance of his thinking, the foundation of an intricate network of ideas which he interpreted. Does journalism really have an impact upon the way in which we perceive ideas? The answer is yes of course, propaganda is an excellent example of how effective a writer can be by softening the truth or simply distorting it. My sister wants to be a journalist to raise important issues, ideas that for particular reasons are left untouched but must be raised. She is naturally curious about the world – a human sponge hungry for knowledge. So where should she go? Somewhere she can write because the there is no point doing something you do not love.

No comments:

Post a Comment