Bloomington, Indiana, Long Ago
Many years ago, I attended a student journalism summit at Indiana University. Newly-minted as co-editor-in-chief of the Guilford High School Viking (with my dear friend C. H., at the time C. R.), it was mandated as a glimpse into higher level journalism. I was a sports stringer and researcher at the Rockford Register Star at the time — a role I would later reprise while also becoming an executive editor at the nation’s oldest college newspaper. Yet, those plums consigned to the rot pile, the one I remember from Indiana those many years ago:
She might have been twenty. I don’t recall her name or what she said her major was, just this one bit on wisdom: “I don’t have friends. I’m here for me and for me alone; everything I do is for me.” (A pause. She surveys the lecture hall, likely used by hale bald old men dissecting the carbon structure of 1-alpha hydroxylase nine months of the year). I didn’t come here to fuck around.”
That’s pretty much my approach to my latest round of education. No fucking around this time.
