Well blog, it's been awhile. I have officially started school again and it doesn't feel like I took a year off. The transition was the same as it's always been, rough and exciting. It's always a rush to start a new semester of school, added though, is the fact that this is graduate level and I'm at a different school. Needless to say, this semester should be interesting and informative about my future profession. And from the looks of it, I may have figured out what I would like to be.
It started out like a normal Monday. You know the usual, wake up and go to work. Listen to the morning talk shows to loosen you up before an exhausting day of work. I had already attended two classes, both the introduction to the profession, so this was the first appearance of access to information. Having already gotten the start of the semester kinks out of my system the previous two weeks, the drive to campus wasn't so daunting. Getting to campus at the time I did that day provided me with free parking which is a rarity at Wayne State. The class was filled with some people I recognized from my introduction class creating the illusion that seeing a familiar face makes things easier to swallow. Class started and we did the usual first class procedures, meeting the professor and classmates. That was fairly standard issue, but what interested me was when we started discussing reference librarians and what they did on a fairly basic level. I was intrigued from the very moment we started talking about it, something just felt so right about it. The more I thought about it the more it became apparent, that this was the field for me.
Although I have only scratched the surface, I am very glad that I chose this field of study. My initial, seemingly passer-by attitude I had when I first brought it up seemed to have more meaning that I originally had thought. Maybe it's not so strange that I choose this field after all, considering my views on the world. My biggest problem with the world is people and how they can seem to believe whatever it is they hear and take it as fact. Too often have I seen information used to take power away when just the opposite should be happening. I may have some very critical views of those who do not agree with me on many things, but my biggest complaint is when people choose to ignore the facts, regardless of what side you want to stand on. If people were better educated and informed this country to be so much better than I really cannot paint a picture to what it may look like. And that makes me want to make sure I can do everything in my power to at least make the slightest difference in the world, because I know that I did the right thing.
Which leads me to people who aren't doing their job: the media. While there are journalists who actually do a fine job, most of the reporting nowadays is pretty shoddy. When most people turn to Fox News or MSNBC they are doing themselves a disservice. While I tend to believe that MSNBC is far more journalistic, if you will, then Fox News. However, they both fail to address the reality of the problem, which is they don't try to solve the problems they are reporting on. They put the same stock people on their shows that say the same things they've been saying all along. Instead of offering counter offers and directed criticism towards officials, policies, or whatever, they just attack characters and stick to old talking points. Neither side is willing to concede to the other in the era of extremism. It seems that burning bridges is a far better option than building them. Because building something that both sides agree on takes sacrifice on both sides, it takes a lot of work to meet in the middle to make something better for everyone. Burning it down is far easier and enables you to start the next project to your liking because there is no precedence anymore, what they create will become the new precedence. This country was founded on compromise and it worked for them, why can't it work now?
Which is why part of me, and a lot of people think that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the only hopes for a galaxy turning to the dark side. Even though what they do is for comedies sake, it still is the greatest service any person can do in this day and age. They skewer politicians and traditional news networks for doing a poor job. They catch the politicians in their lies and deceit. They lay waste to the media for not doing the jobs they seem to be doing. In short segments, typically lasting around ten minutes, they are able to show us how broken the system is and how simple issues really are. They are over complicated by politicians trying to score political points while they are over simplified by the media to explain it to the lowest common denominator. The type of laughter that comes from this is a chilling one. Part of it is because it actually is quite funny, but the other part is one of this type of shame that this is our political system. How did it get this bad? When did it get this bad? Has it always been like this, or is a more recent development in the moving into the fringe?
It's part of the reason I will be going to DC to see their rally's. One, a call for sanity, as Stewart would put it: "Lets take it down a notch America." The other, a restore to fear, to which Colbert will most likely satirize the very element of fear and how it created the state of affairs we're currently in. Both will, hopefully, have huge attendances and at least put a blip in the radar for Congress. Maybe when the average people, who are always told to keep their politics to themselves finally speak up, the country will listen for once.
