I start school tomorrow, but I really feel like I am going on a retreat. School is like vacation compared to my summer internship at the Ocala Star-Banner newspaper, where I worked nine to 10-hour plus days. The real world is harder, more draining and less flexible than school. The real world is grueling. I count my blessings, now that I’m a student again.

But in a sense, I don’t feel like a student anymore. The real world changed me, like I’ve been through the crucible. I can’t relate to students’ complain about long days (3-hour classes) or mid-terms (try writing two articles in four hours). I can’t relate to students who mope about no rest (because they party or procrastinate too much). I am deafened to student’s complaints and my own after seeing professionals come in at 9 am, push to make deadlines, leave at 6 and go home to take care of their families.

And how do you maintain your relationships with family and friends when you come home feeling like beat meat? I contained all the energy of a stick when I got home, and I didn’t really feel like discussing my day or anyone else’s. My relationship with my family didn’t suffer, but my relationship with my friends did. I thought I placed a high priority on maintaining friendships, but that seemed to be the most dispensable area of my life while I worked. I didn’t make time to call my friends or hang out. My internship kept me busy so I didn’t realize how lonely I was until it ended.

My friendships are not exactly in trouble, but they kind of cooled off from neglect. Bottomline: I learned that I have to fight to make time for my loved ones. I can have only so much joy in a successful internship (or career achievement) without meaningful relationships in my life.

It may seem that the Star-Banner worked me like a slave. Well, not exactly a slave because I got paid. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was hard work. However, newspaper reporting makes up for being hard, by being fascinating and versatile.

As a general assignment reporter, I had the opportunity to meet new people, go new places and learn new subjects every day. I got to hop in my car and drive to where the news called. One day I drove around talking to restaurant owners who were mad because the city disallowed their from selling liquor on Sundays. I also met two teens who wrote, produced and directed a play about Jack the Ripper. I spent several hours at a summer camp watching kids enjoy the outdoors. I spent half a day touring firehouses, meeting and learning about firefighters and doing some abridged training. Later on that day, I was with a fire captain as we drove to a woman’s house being engulfed by flames. I watched the women as she watched her house and sobbed over irreplaceable items like photos and journals. (Her roof eventually collapsed.)

Reporting could be as heartbreaking as it was thrilling. I had to convey a new tenderness in my voice as I spoke with the woman about losing her home (thankfully not her life.) I used that same tenderness when speaking with the uncle of a woman killed in a car crash. Those were the times I hated being a reporter. I felt heartless because my goal was not to help, but to gather facts and write a story. I spent a lot of time talking with my fellow reporters about striking the balance between being a good journalist and a good human being.

I spent a lot of time gleaning from my “fellow reporters.” Calling them fellow reporters is like calling my instructors “fellow professors.” I was in awe of them. I did find more apathy and cynicism than I expected, but I met a few who bottled enough passion to neutralize any looming indifference. Additionally, spending time in a newsroom helped me fulfill my human need to laugh 500 times a day. There isn’t a wittier, sharper or funnier room than a newsroom. At the Star-Banner I found a mixture of diverse and opinionated people forced to keep their opinions out of their work but not from one another. So there were some great discussions in that newsroom, as people bristled at “idiot county commissioners” and “shyster contractors.” I was surprised at people’s candidness. Many taboo topics were discussed with spirit, humor and open-mindedness. I found journalists to be the most rational class of society.

Sadly, I can’t be one. The devil is in the writing. Two semesters ago I complained about having weekly deadlines for articles in my journalism classes. Fast forward to my fighting to make a daily deadline. Some days I’d spend four hours reporting, and two hours writing. There were a few bad days where I wrote more than one article. The seasoned veterans did that every day. The pace of newspaper reporting is exciting to some people. It is maddening to me. My internship multiplied my respect for journalists, but it taught me that I don’t want to be one. At least not the newspaper brand.

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