These are the times when I feel guiltiest -- when I sit in the cafe for breakfast, next to a table of girls in baggy Biola sweatshirts, black-rimmed glasses and sweats. Their hair is pulled back, an unspoken testament that it's been 2 days since they've seen the shower. They chatter about cell respiration, then the effects of shock, then some technical functions I didn't even know existed in the body.
I sit and eat a plate of cottage cheese. On their table are thick binders and notebooks with no illustrations. On my table is a pork, chorizo and egg burrito.
It's not the first time I've felt guilty about my humanities major, one that can hardly even be called scholarly. Our most technical assignments in the journalism department are learning a page design program. I don't have to pull all-nighters unless the computer in the Chimes office is refusing to convert a page into PDF format. These nursing majors have to pull all nighters because there simply is no other way to get this stuff done.
Journalism is my passion -- it's what gets me going, it's the thing that I would do for the rest of my life even if I never got a paycheck for it. But can't anyone do journalism? Those nursing majors could write an article. They could learn InDesign. But I can't do what they're doing unless I plop down $100,000 and slave through another four years of nursing school.
Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Mom and dad, I hope I'm not wasting your money.
I listen to them talking and I start calculating in my head. How much would it cost for me to attend nursing school after I graduate? How many years would that take? If I became a missionary, I would really want to be a nurse so I could be useful to these people... certainly God couldn't use a journalism major in Mozambique, could he?
Maybe this is just me being jealous in some odd sense. Maybe it's just an insecurity. Maybe God wants me in journalism but is giving me a different kind of suffering and doubt to work through -- one that requires faith and my belief that he knew what he was doing when he crafted this path through this particular humanities major.
I hope. Ugh, I really do hope.
2 comments:
God needs writers. If you don't tell the story of women around the world and how they are treated, or how they need Jesus, how will the nursing missionaries know where they are needed most? Health care is a huge issue, but unless Americans hear what countries have closed borders to mission work but are open to medical workers, or water purification workers or farming instructors, how will they know the need? Keep at your love and profession and God will use you in a strange and mysterious way. Miss Jeannine
Michele, I often feel the same way. I feel as though journalism is not always the most academic nor scholarly. However, something we have been studying in Philosophy of Journalism this semester is that journalism is a calling just as a minister is called to the pulpit. We are called to be voices for the voiceless and do God's work in the newsrooms around the world. And not just anyone can be a journalist. Sure, you can learn it, but we could learn to be a nursing major to. But would you have a passion for it? And would others have a passion for journalism? To be a journalistm, you must be passionate. For the amount of hours and work it takes to get a story or to be promoted in the world of journalism, you must love it! God calls us to be journalists and not just anyone could do it. Really!
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