Chapter Three
My journalism class was wrapping up for the day; everyone else was looking at the clock or the door, putting their stuff away even though there was another 10 minutes and Professor Grant wasn’t done saying the last few things about our reading on style.
“Remember, everyone: it’s important to cultivate your own journalistic voice, but you also have to be mindful of the rules of style — the basic elements that every publication looks for — and the specific style rules that your publication demands.”
I took another look at the diagram on the overhead — it compared AP style to Chicago style. Grant had us all read Politics and the English Language, along with part of Elements of Style for the class; I’d liked both — especially the bitter, harsh humor in “Politics.” I was really starting to enjoy the course, an introduction to journalism.
The end of class arrived and I joined in with everyone else loading my stuff into my bag, ready to go. I was taking a pretty full course load, but I had a couple of hours free before my next class.
“Evelyn, do you have a minute to talk?” Grant called out as the other students started to file out.
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, Professor Grant,” I replied, calling out over the murmurs and screech of desks against the linoleum floor. I sat back down, settling my books, my laptop, and my pens in my bag while everyone left.
Professor Grant was gathering up his stuff, and as the last of the other students left the room I got up and approached the front of the room, stopping short of the desk.
“You wanted to talk to me, Professor Grant?” I said, feeling anxious in spite of myself. I knew I was making decent grades in the class.
“Absolutely, Evelyn,” Grant said, looking up from his laptop bag with a grin.
He was in his forties, starting to go gray but with all of his hair still there. Lots of girls at the college had crushes on Grant, I knew; everyone vied to have him as their advisor and I’d seen plenty of my classmates giggling as they left his office during office hours. I could see why they liked him — he was nice, and he looked good — but I wasn’t into older guys.
“Take a chair.”
I shrugged and sat down. It wasn’t likely that Grant was going to chew me out — or at least, I hoped it wasn’t likely.
“What’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my nerves from showing. Grant leaned against the desk.
“I wanted to talk to you because I’ve been reading your papers for these past eight weeks and they’re… well, frankly, they’re well above the level you’d need to do well in this class.” I smiled, relieved; even though I knew I had done well, it was good to hear it. “If I graded on a curve, the entire class would hate you.”
“Oh come on,” I said, laughing. “I’m not that good.”
Grant nodded his head slowly. “You are. In fact, you’re so good I wanted to ask you to consider joining the college newspaper. There’d be a little pay for it — not a lot, but enough to finance the occasional food run — and it would be a good early experience for you.”
My eyes widened at the offer. Grant wasn’t just a professor — he was the Journalism Department head and the faculty member in charge of the campus paper. I hadn’t even been aware that there were any openings.
“There’s an opening?”
Grant nodded. “We can always use news and features material. It would be a staff reporting position — nothing too major, but a way to get your feet wet. Your first few assignments would come from the editorial board, but once we know you can cut it on your own, you’ll be covering your own beat — whatever you want to write about, with editorial discretion.”
It was as good an offer as I could ever get. It wasn’t professional publishing, but if I did good work, I could eventually expect a column, maybe an editorial position to pad my resume with.
But on the other hand, a gig like that — even part time as it was — would take away from my studying. Not all of my classes were as interesting or easy as Intro to Journalism. I was hanging on to a steady high B average in Statistics — but I could slip on that easily. Math had never been my strongest subject. It was a tough choice, because as much as it could advance my career in the future, it could also screw me up, which wouldn’t look good on a resume.
“That’s… I can’t even believe it,” I said, smiling — knowing that Grant expected me to say something. “It’s a pretty big time commitment, isn’t it?”
“At first it shouldn’t take you more than a handful of hours a week. Of course, as time goes on and you prove yourself, that will change. But for right now, consider it maybe five or six hours out of your week, for research and writing.”
I thought about it. The opportunity the offer represented was a lot greater than the risk of losing a few hours per week studying.
“I’d love to,” I said, smiling at Professor Grant. He returned my grin.
“Excellent. The next meeting is in a week,” he told me. “I will add you to the email group list in the meantime, and I’ll send you log-in information for the Blackboard sub-site we use.”
I picked up my bag — now that I made the decision, I was excited more than I was afraid. I couldn’t wait to get started. First, I had a study session in the library before my next class.
I was thinking about the opportunity, considering buying back-editions of the campus paper to get a feel for the voice — something Grant mentioned in passing when he did the first lecture on voice and style — while I walked to the library. All of my homework was done for my next class, but I was still struggling with a couple of things in American History and I wanted to put in an hour or so. I had reserved one of the rooms; really, for the purposes of seriously studying, it was either that or my dorm. The main part of the library was always full of people working on papers or getting tutoring — it was loud, impossible to focus.
I looked up and saw Zack walking into the library a few yards ahead of me and stopped dead in my tracks. It wasn’t so much seeing Zack — though that was plenty strange, to see him twice when I hadn’t caught sight of him at all in my first eight weeks at the college — it was seeing him going into the library that was weird. Zack had always been fairly smart, but he’d barely kept up a high C-average in high school, getting extensions on projects and assignments and taking the test under special circumstances because he was a member of the football team. The idea of him going to the library — studying, or even taking an interest in any of his classes enough to look things up for it — was beyond weird. It was like walking in on your parents having an orgy; not the kind of thing you would ever expect to see, and too shocking to actually process for a moment.
For a moment, my plans weren’t changed at all; Zack was probably meeting with a tutor or something. The private study rooms were in a completely different part of the library. But I would have to go through the main areas to get upstairs to the private rooms, and there was the possibility that Zack would spot me. If he spotted me, he might talk to me. I shook my head. I shouldn’t let him break my routine; we were nothing to each other, even if he kissed me — even if he said he missed me. He certainly hadn’t missed me enough to put much effort into finding me at the party. I was surprised that apparently bothered me. It shouldn’t have, and I knew it shouldn’t have. But all the same, I didn’t want to risk running into Zack. Instead of walking to the library, I turned at the fork in the sidewalk and headed back towards the dorms.