The inverted pyramid.
That first summer I was an intern at Dayton Daily News is like a living sepia photo in my mind. The colors are distinct, but muddled, and the most discernible thing about that summer is the brightness that I feel when I think back to those days.
I had always thought I wanted to be a teacher, but by the time I was a senior in high school, I realized that education was not my calling. Rather, I had taken the position of Senior Editor and then Copy Editor for our high school newspaper and I discovered a truth about myself that I had actually known all along:
Whatever career I chose, I had to be writing.
That revelation lead to journalism, which ended up not being the path I chose—but in that summer I learned more about myself than I have in any other season of my life.
More than anything, I think that internship gave me such a sense of importance. Not that I was important necessarily, but that there were important things to be done in the world. I learned so many things in those short three months: the inverted pyramid, parallel parking, how to drink real coffee, and the all important questions of who, what, when, where, and why?
In the end, the hardest lesson I learned was that I could never be a good journalist. Call it gut, or something else, but I just did not/do not have what it takes to force the tough answers out of people.
What I have, of course, is a sincere love for the written word… and I can say with full confidence that my first summer as an intern was the crash course I needed for a life of writing.
Some of those lessons I learned:
- Trying to get children to answer a question with anything more than “yes” or “no” taught me how to answer the tough questions myself.
- The benefit of working on a deadline is that every project is your opportunity to save the day, and to give the world something else worthwhile before the day is done.
- Nothing will ever make you cheer for the protagonist like learning that the good characters are so far outnumbered by the bad.
I could go on and on, and maybe I will in some future post, but what I really mean to say is this: In that first summer as an intern for the Dayton Daily News, there were some people and projects that ended up changing my life. That old building taught me everything I know about writing, and most of what I know about life.
And I am grateful.
