This will be my last column for the Daily Beacon. I worked as a staff writer, a copy editor and finally as the Arts and Entertainment Editor. Now, I am taking up a full-time internship with the Knoxville News Sentinel in order to further hone my writing skills.
I have thoroughly enjoyed trying to make the entertainment beat better, and I have had the privilege of watching other writers grow and learn, even to the point of replacing me. I am enjoying training my successor and passing the torch, even trying to recruit more writers, as my last act of service to the Beacon.
I owe a great debt to the Beacon because it is here that I have gained confidence and experience in writing. It is here that I have built the portfolio that got me the job I am now taking. Classes alone cannot do this. Through the Beacon, I have had the means to professionally go out, meet and interview people; visit places I never thought I would; taste, listen to, watch and play things I would not have otherwise — and write about it. I have learned how to manage deadlines, how to look come up with story ideas, figure out how much time and effort a story will take and where my talents in writing lie.
The Daily Beacon develops writers. So let me first address my fellows in the School of Journalism and Electronic Media, then the rest of campus.
JEM majors: In this business, experience and ethics are the ultimate currency. A square hat means nothing. Being a journalist is no more academic than chopping wood. No amount of studying it, diagramming it, watching others do it or thinking about it can train your arms for it. Muscle is gained by chopping, over and over. Interviewing, researching in other sources, note-taking, note-transcribing, writing, editing, etc. are all practical skills that have to be developed in action. But if you are a Beacon writer who takes assignments and meets deadlines, you will surely gain these skills.
A future in journalism cannot be won with degrees or good grades. It is won like a part in a play. You have to have the skills to act; you have to perform. If you don’t, your degree is worthless. Confidence and true skill are built at the Beacon like muscles are built at the TRECS. Anyone serious about being a journalist should work here.
Now for the rest of campus: Whatever your field, this principle applies to you, and no student of art or music will disagree with me. Whatever your field, you must put your knowledge to practice. We must put our hands to the spindle and weave our futures ourselves. Let me correct a false adage that floats about in education: Knowledge will never give you power. Taking action will.
I spoke of ethics. Herein lies the value of what we Beacon writers do upstairs, with all the other square hats. A skill can be put to good or ill use, whatever that skill may be. I cite preaching as an example. A good preacher who is good rests among the best of humanity, but a clergyman who abuses his power over a flock of good people may be more wicked than any criminal the world has to offer.
Education is to make us educated. What we are supposed to get by being here and not in a vocational program for our trade is the knowledge of what we are and what we believe in? What is the role and responsibility of the journalist? A musician? A nuclear engineer? A nurse? An artist? What is his highest call and purpose? Are we only using our skills to make money? If we are, we’ve missed the whole point of anything that can be a career. We have missed the whole point of life. Are we in it only for self-propulsion up to prominence? A real life means still more. A real life means you look at everything you do with the best interest of the universe in mind, acting on principles, on a belief in something better. As Miguel de Cervantes said, “Virtue is the truest nobility.”
There are many on this campus in mad pursuit of wealth, accolades and reputation. Everyone is trying to move up, to have more, to be liked more by their fellows. Their only notion is to live a good life. But living a good life is not the point of life all.
When your eulogy is read at your funeral, when you are dead and forgotten and generations have come and gone, only one thing about you will have mattered: your morality– how your moral choices affected those around you through relationships. Did you take the actions of love for those around you? Because of you, were the lives of others better more often than they were worse?
Skill is in experience. Success is in using it for good, out of your own enlightened realization that there’s more to life. Actions of love and tolerance for others, without attachment, is the possession of the truly educated. And that makes demands upon everything we do and especially how we go about working. What can you do for humanity? How can your career — and even your very life lived by the breath — be a blessing to the world for the good of all? On what principles will you stand? What discipline will you seek? Who will you serve?
