Pittsburgh Public Schools' Visions...Clouded?

I'm rarely on my Twitter account (which is @EyeoftheWriter by the way), but when I am, I come across some interesting Tweets. I'm from Pittsburgh, and a journalism major, so I follow many Twitter accounts from the Pittsburgh area like officials and journalists. Scrolling down not but five minutes ago, I found this little gem from the Post-Gazette Education editor:

Before I continue, I want to say that this post is not targeted at the editor or at any specified individual. It is meant to be editorial in nature only.

When I read this post, at first I thought it was a fantastic vision. All schools envision their students graduating from some college or getting some level of workforce certification. It's drilled in our heads from the time we're in elementary school that we're going to grow up and get "big people jobs." I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is why they are possibly going to push all their students into getting some kind of special paper saying they learned something.

Not every job requires some form of certification. Let's take writing for example. There are writing majors and minors in many colleges, and several writers have a degree of some sort. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need a degree to be a writer. Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, dropped out of law school to pursue a career in writing. William Faulkner, author of The Big Sleep, also dropped out of college...twice. Both writers lacked a college degree, and they wrote beautiful works that won awards and are read by high school and college students everywhere. Am I making my point?

If not, consider this. What about all of the entrepreneurs in today's society?  What about the people who work from their home without a degree as a start-up business? You may get technical and say, "Well, they need documentation for these things." That point I'll give you. However, they don't always necessarily have "workforce certification." Look at Steve Jobs! He was highly successful, highly intelligent, and highly creative. Guess what? He dropped out of college. You know of something called a Big Mac? Next time you order one at the only place these are sold, McDonald's, you can thank high school drop-out Ray Kroc, the founder. The list of people who don't have any certifications but made a successful living for themselves is endless (but for a small taste, you can click here).

It's great that these schools want their students to succeed. I'm not arguing against that. I'm just arguing about the methodology and the psychology behind it. Options for students aren't just black and white. They don't have to go to college and get a degree. They don't have to get any sort of workforce certification. I understand that many if not all jobs nowadays requires it, but there are plenty above examples to demonstrate my point that you don't need certification to be successful.

I was going to close with advice to parents and teachers as well as students, but I'm not going to tell a parent or teacher how to do their job. That isn't my place. However, I can give advice to all of you students out there. Don't think you are limited to getting some form of certification. If you want to go to college or a trade school, that's fantastic. If not, that is too. Look at your options, explore possible careers, and do what makes you happy. That's the most important thing, because it's your life.

The INFJ Personality and My Career

Many of us have been exposed to the Myers-Brigg personality test at some point in our lives, whether we found it online and took it for fun or we took it for a class. I've taken it a couple times (because my memory slipped me what my precise personality type was) and I am an INFJ personality.

INFJs are known for being caring, creative, and extremely organized. This is highly accurate of myself, especially in the journalism field - my chosen field of study.

In journalism, you have to have some form of empathy. You don't want to interview a murder victim's widow with cold eyes and only focused on the story. I pride myself on having a high level of empathy in any situation. I can listen to a story someone tells me, and - usually - I can feel what they were feeling when the situation happened and/or how they feel at the moment relaying the story to me.

I recently conducted an interview with a man who is the spokesman for a biker group that hold one major ride every year in August. He told me stories of heartbreak, and stories packed with joy and pride. To describe my emotions in short would be impossible, but I could feel everything he felt about those topics, which is something crucial to the field in order to obtain contacts and keep them in your Rolodex. You never know when you're going to need them again for another story, or just to get to know them better.

Creativity is also key to my field. You have to be creative with transitions and descriptions, or you'll quickly lose an audience. I used to make all my stories straight news stories, and now I'm honing my descriptions and making my writing more creative. This is all thanks to not only my journalism professor, but also Rust Hills, who is the author of one of the books we have to read for class. I'm gaining a better understanding or journalism as being short story nonfiction writing, and I'm becoming a better writer because of that.

The last crucial piece to having extreme organization. I won't lie. I'm obsessive-compulsive about certain things, but in a good way. I have to have a clean workspace. If I don't, I can't let my creative juices flow. A cluttered area leads to a cluttered mind, and a journalist's mind is already cluttered enough. I also like having my stories organized as well, using the inverted pyramid, of course. I like having a plan laid out for me as well, one where I can see what's coming up and prepare for it. It makes my life easier because I know when to schedule what.

These are just some aspects of my personality that help me in my industry, of course. I didn't mention extreme determination or passion, which I have about my field or else I wouldn't be going into it. These qualities also carry over into the public relations side of my career, because most of my PR work is derived from my journalism background. It's quite interesting to see how my personality fits in with my field. It just shows that I have made the right choice for me.

My Professional "Aha" Moment

I already posted this to my Tumblr, but I felt it should be posted here too, to my professional blog. It explains how I got into the field I did, and the career choices I passed up along the way. Hope you enjoy!

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Rarely does a person enter the career they told their relatives they were going to go into when they were young (i.e. when they were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up). I certainly am no exception. When I was four I told my grandparents I wanted to go into meteorology, and here I am attending university for my last year for my Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.

The switch from meteorology to journalism wasn’t a simple transition. Between then, I had several different occupations in mind for what I wanted to be: a travel writer, an archaeologist, and a psychologist.

The idea for travel writing came after a three-week adventure through Europe when I was 12. I love writing. I’ve been doing it ever since I was 3 and trying to learn how to write in cursive. I kept journals throughout my life and wanted to have stories published and become a writer in general (in addition to the meteorology gig). I had to face the facts, though. Writing doesn’t pay the big bucks unless you were lucky. I severely doubted my luck.

Around the same time, I had aspirations of becoming an archaeologist. I had this fascination with Ancient Egypt as well as World War II. I wanted to go on excavations and find jewelry and other things, maybe some bombshells in Germany, something! I wanted to have my own little museum of treasures in my home, but I found out that you don’t really get to keep the stuff you find (darn that childhood rule of finders keepers). That idea flew out the window, and I began to think about becoming a psychologist.

Psychology was a rash decision itself. I always listened to other people’s problems and offered them advice (which I don’t follow myself even though it works for everyone else). I didn’t think about the amount of schooling it would take to get there, nor did I really know what field of psychology I wanted to go into. Thank God my high school offered journalism, or I wouldn’t be where I am today.

I suppose as a small point I should mention how I went from straight journalism to going for journalism with a public relations. I had to pick a related area, and I figured I could become a publicist for someone. Maybe I would move to London or New York, somewhere, and become Jason Statham’s or Jensen Ackles’ publicist (only in my dreams). I took Public Relations I at my university last year, and realized this was what I wanted to do. I now plan on graduating next year with my degree, and moving out to Vegas soon after.

The key lesson to take from this is not to settle your heart on one profession unless you are absolutely sure this is what you want to do and are dedicated to the chosen field. Do something you’re going to love 10, 20, even 50 years down the road. I’m planning on it, and I couldn’t be more excited.