Operation Finish The Degree I Wanted has began. I'm not one to complain, but I honestly didn't really want to do chemistry. Living up to lofty expectations that you don't really want to is never fun. I like chemistry, but it's not something I can do for the rest of my life. I used to listen to Wu-Tang while studying my behind off through Organic Chem.
"No question, I would flow off, and try and get the dough off..."
So while that classic Raekwon line from "C.R.E.A.M." helped me walk across the stage, it wasn't what I wanted to be doing. Since I was a kid, I've wanted to do three things. First, I wanted to be a lawyer. Second, a rapper. But third and probably the most focused of my three goals, was to be a reporter. A journalist. If I couldn't tell stories in rhyme, I would tell stories in lines. Even got pretty good at it. High school pretty much centered around journalism. My choices of colleges centered around journalism. I got side tracked by the lust of money and lucrative bids by my father's friends, urging me to go into chemistry so I could be "Little Femi," a younger version of my pops.
While I don't mind following Dad's footsteps, he's set the bar way too high for where I'm even trying to go. Doctrates in chemistry and physics....how the hell am I even to TOP that? Nor, why would I even WANT to? I like science, but that's cruel and unusal punishment. I guess living in a third world country will help build that kind of mental stamnia and desire to achieve. I do not have enough for that.
So fast forward to today. My lane is wherever I want to be. And while it is a lot of work, I'm pretty happy. If you don't grind, you don't shine. If you don't work, you don't eat. I like to do both. I like to achieve and be fed. As everyone does, naturally. But more specifically, I want to shine doing something I love. While at work, all I could think of is writing, music and stories. Inspiration can come inside emmense boredom. Since I've been in full supply of boredom, I'm excited about the prospects of this new semester.
Circle of Life is sort of a dumb theory until it slaps you right across your head. For one of my journalism classes, I have a professor that is a huge blast from the past. My Mass Media Writing professor used to be the advisor of my high school rival's newspaper, and the mother of a pretty good friend of mine. She also used to run the journalism camp I attended while in high school. It's pretty weird having her as a professor, but in a good way. Reason being, I want to do really well, just let her know that I've grown as a writer. And I have. I mean, my work junior and senior year of high school was mostly to impress her and the staff she worked with, so I could gain respect for myself, especially coming from an advanced paper as my high school paper and our rival papers are.
I treat my loves in my life the same. It always goes back to music for me. There's nothing in this world better than a fresh, newly made instrumental. Beats, rhymes, life is not just a Tribe Called Quest album title, but a way of life for those of us who live hip hop. I'm always going to love hip hop, and I think journalism has that spot in my heart, too. I just gotta communicate, ever since the doctor who birthed me told my mom I was a talker. I always have been, and writing is talking, just with paper. I've spent forever with a journal/rhyme book.
So when we were given the assignment to have a blog....a blogspot blog, I was geeked. I'm already a step x 1000 ahead, because your boy has been getting it in with the Brainiac Society and the WordToEm website. I got a blog and a site. I don't know if I will be able to use this one as a school blog, nor do I think I want to. My classmates might get a chance to read it, and I'm excited about that, but it might cause a change in tone of writing. Tone of writing is important. It is the difference between dropping knowledge and talking down to the readership, and that's a thin line. Do I think I'm going to have to patronize a few of my new classmates? Time will tell. The inherent problem with the class assignment is that it will possibly expose me as a pompus jerk who looks down on people who don't write at my level. That's why it's called the Brainiac Society. I believe I know everything until proven otherwise. My brief time in Chicago allowed me to meet Jay Mariotti, from ESPN's Around The Horn. I was speaking to him in passing and he gave me some advice for an up and coming sports writer/columnist. He told me to be a truly good journalist is to know you know everything and my job is to prove it through my words, but if I don't believe myself, my readers won't either. That might be the second best advice I ever got in journalism. First was not to close until you save TWO copies.
So if this blog becomes Central mediated, I don't think I'm going to slight them. I think I'm going to keep going hard in between the lines, because it is my job. I'm serious with this.
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