when 'his girl friday' says, 'become a journalist...'

in high school, i wanted to be a journalist. why? because of 'his girl friday.'

i watched rosalind russell and cary grant having a ball as they bickered playfully, scurried around the newsroom, chased down leads and did anything they had to do to get the story. honeymoons were interrupted, fiances were stolen away, mothers-in-law were insulted, suspects were hidden, fire departments were called, trains were missed and laws were bent, all in the name of keeping an innocent man from the death penalty with a newspaper article, because clearly the journalists were the only people who had all the answers.

i saw how writing and investigating and finding the truth was in their souls, and i wanted to be like them. i wanted to channel all my passion into my writing, and to talk fast enough with enough clever wit to charm and confuse any opposition. i knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that i was meant to be a journalist. i wanted to bring enlightenment to the people; putting my blood, sweat and tears into fighting evil, one story at a time.

i'm now an advertising major.

'his girl friday' taught me that life is not at all like the movies, especially not 1940's screwball comedies. being a journalism major is nowhere near as fun as it looks. you don't get to write about interesting things like the one piece of information that could set an innocent man free. instead, you write about things like school board meetings and people who dress up their pets for halloween. you don't engage in heated discussions defending your point of view, ultimately convincing all naysayers that yours is the best idea. no, you just spend a lot of time getting yelled at, either by your editor or an angry reader. there isn't much traipsing around town, accusing the guilty and protecting the innocent. in fact, you pretty much just sit in front of a computer making calls, then you occasionally go outside and practically beg someone to talk to you.

when you're watching 'his girl friday,' you don't realize that people actually hate talking to journalists. you don't see how long it takes sources to call back. they don't show you the editor-journalist relationship that doesn't involve witty banter and ex-spouses who are still in love with each other.

to clarify, i've always known i wanted to write, but once i saw how much fun rosalind and cary were having as journalists, i sort of figured that was the only way to write for a living. not true at all. i'm sure i'm not the only one who saw someone in a movie and wanted to be like them, and while it's a little ridiculous, it's also somewhat understandable.

take 'casablanca,' for instance. doesn't it make you want to escape to casablanca, marry humphrey bogart and run a cafe? it's not realistic, and when you really think about it you know you'd never move to casablanca to run a cafe in a million years, but that's the great thing about movies. we can escape into other peoples' lives for a while. you could watch 'goldfinger' and think about how cool it would be to be james bond, but even as you think it, you know you'd probably be the worst secret agent ever.

i am here to tell you from experience that while it's perfectly okay to think about how great your life would be if you were a bank robber or an intergalactic princess or a pie-maker-by-day, crime-fighter-by-night, you should by no means pursue these careers.

maybe more movies should be like 'silence of the lambs,' where at the end you'd rather do almost anything than be a psychiatrist.