A decade under the journalistic influence

Ten years later and I am back at the place I first started.

I am doing a week’s work experience at the Harrow Observer but due to the shrinking budgets of local newspapers, the paper has relocated to Uxbridge.

I trudge up the two flights of stairs my 15-year-old self did a decade earlier with a strange and knowing sense of déjà vu. I am going over old ground and it all feels slightly depressing.

I remember the excitement of my teenage self. My first break into the exciting world of journalism: in a news room and learning the ropes from the hacks themselves.

I have gone so far and yet ended back up at the same place. I feel wiser than before in the years that have passed but simultaneously like I haven’t moved at all.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back but I need 10 days of work experience to meet the course criteria. If I get the placement I will take it.

I have already had three days over Christmas where I worked remotely from home while the snow fell silently outside.

But now here I am, physically present. Nothing seems to have changed except that there are far fewer people and the news room has become the territory of the sales staff.

The reporters have been relegated to a section near the training room. The carpet it still the same shade of faded brown, like a tea stain that refuses to leave.

There are people the same age as me who are fully-fledged reporters and there I am. I feel a childish helplessness.

It feels like all those times when I was a teenager in room full of twenty-somethings desperately trying to attain a sense of self-worth and validation, that I had a right to be there.

There are times when I have to hold my tongue in case I come across as arrogant or ungrateful or just plain rude.

I want to convey intelligence with all my years of knowledge and experience but it doesn’t seem to translate.

Then again what have I really learnt since the last time I was here?

I used to think I wanted to be a reporter on a local rag but I seem to be making the simplest mistakes.

My terrible habit of needing to call a person back repeatedly still follows me around like a piece of chewing gum stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing wrong, why I haven’t made it yet. Sometimes I wonder if I am cut out for all of this but then I remind myself that I love it.

I love the interaction with people, the thrill of chasing a story and the careful construction of words. It is the satisfaction of seeing the words I have written: black upon white. My name printed on the page.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better and I will have had time to reflect upon my mistakes.