Wait, I have a career?

Every once in a while I’ll get one of those “Wait, I’m an adult now,” moments where I have to stop, look around, and remind myself that I’m not 16 anymore. 

One particularly disturbing moment came two years ago, when Centralia College’s Education Talent Search program contacted me about Career Day. Initially I figured they just wanted me to cover it, but shortly thereafter I was shocked to realize that they wanted me to present. 

Despite questioning whether or not I was the best person to speak with authority to a group of teenagers about journalism (or anything aside from “the college lifestyle”) I took the gig and had a good time. 

In retrospect I was a little unprepared. This year I’ve been given a second shot at Career Day (I missed last year’s while on vacation in Europe) and decided to put forth a little more effort. 

My “students” will enter class at 10 a.m. today and be put to work (in groups of two) as journalists covering a story I made up about a kid jumping off a bridge in Adna. They’ll be given a “press release” I invented from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office (any real journalist would know it’s fake, since there’s no picture of a smiling Steve Mansfield at the top) and information on how to reach two “sources”: one of the injured kid’s friends, and the “deputy” who responded to the call. 

The sources are friends of my little brother, who have been given vague instructions on what to tell the inquiring student-reporters. I’m paying one in burritos, and helping the other write a campaign speech in his run for ASB president. They shouldn’t be too tough for the students to track down, since they’ll be sitting at the back of the classroom.

Anyway, my charges will be provided with real Portage® Professional Reporter’s Notebooks and told to think up questions and interview the deputy and the victim/suspect’s friend. Then, in theory, they’ll write up a story (before deadline) and read it in front of the rest of the class, like a TV news reporter. I hate to have them do anything like a broadcast journalist, but it’s a lot simpler than asking the college to install a press in one room so we can print out a real paper (and I can barely run a Xerox machine, let alone a real printing press). 

There’s even a bonus: I’ll print the best story I read tomorrow in Thursday’s paper! Just kidding, but there’s always the off chance one of the groups will throw away the press release, interview no one and write something hilarious instead, which I would put in this blog. 

That’s the plan, anyway. There’s always the off-chance that the students will all skip my class and learn how to be chefs or lifeguards or astronauts or managers of the box factory or whatever. I’ll report back with more on my career day adventure later.