What I want to do with my life

[clementine]

Mirrored from Oh Clementine. You can leave any comments there.

In my Civics class, we recently watched a documentary called Sticks and Stones, which is mainly about how polarised left- and right-wing politics in the US are becoming. A lot of the students in my class found the documentary – and politics, in general – boring, but I really enjoyed watching it.

The documentary featured people like Ann Coulter ("We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity") and Bill "SHUT UP!" O'Reilly. I found the things Ann Coulter said to to the interviewer (CBC's Bob McKeown) pretty shocking, but I was completely unprepared for the things concerning Bill O'Reilly.

One man who had lost his father in 9/11 but who didn't support the war was on The O'Reilly Factor¹. O'Reilly told him that the Afghans killed his father, which was bad enough – but when he told the man that his father wouldn't have agreed with him, that was just too much. I may or may not have shouted out, "Do you know his father? No? Then shut up, [expletive]."² Then, they showed him having an argument with Toronto's Heather Mallick, telling her that they (the US) had destroyed France's economy (citing a financial journal that is, in fact, non-existent) and that he would do the same thing to Canada's economy… and that it would be her fault. He asked her if she was prepared to take the responsibility for the total collapse of our economy. (Funny, actually, considering the fact that they're still in a recession and we're doing just fine.)

I don't know precisely how to describe it, but seeing the exchange between Bill O'Reilly and Heather Mallick somehow fired me up. I've been considering journalism as a possible career for awhile now, and watching this documentary almost cemented this idea. And I know I don't want to be the kind of journalist who sits in a news room and talks about an art fair at a high school, or even the kind of journalist who sits in a news room and talks about war and violence. I want to be the kind of journalist who challenges people like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter. I want to go out there and have my voice heard. I want to change the way the media works. I want to make it truly fair and balanced, so that people like Bill O'Reilly can't just yell at people to shut up when they say something he doesn't like and still claim to be the "no spin zone". I want to make a difference in the world.

Although I know there's a possibility that I will change my mind, but I don't think I've ever been so sure of what I want to do with my life (and I've changed my mind a lot of times). I guess this could be called a crucial point in my life.

Do you know what you want to do with your life? If you do, when and how did you know for sure?

1. supposedly the "no spin zone" – yeah, just like Fox is "fair and balanced" [↩]
2. My Civics teacher didn't mind – in fact, I think she agreed [↩]