I have discovered that journalism and exhaustion go hand in hand. I cannot remember the last time I have been so tired, or the last time I went so many consecutive days with this little sleep, and yet, here I am at 10:48PM, when I could justifiably be sleeping, preparing to launch into a tirade about journalism and why I feel that even though journalism and exhaustion go hand in hand, I have still discovered this week that there is nothing else in the world that I would rather be doing. Perhaps I would get more sleep at other jobs, but I do not believe that they would be nearly as rewarding. I cannot see myself sitting behind a desk for hours at a time without moving. I would far rather be running around trying to get quotes from people, even when those people really don't want to give you quotes. I have discovered a tactic to use when getting quotes from people, however, and thus far it has worked well.

My method, you see, is to act perfectly innocent and shy. For example, today I was attempting to get quotes from business owners. So I would walk into a shop and stand around for a short while, looking as though I didn't know what I was doing. Then, I would find someone who did not seem too busy and ask shyly if there was a manager that I could talk to about an article that I was doing. This is when the majority of people clam up and don't want to talk to me anymore, but that is also when I put on the sugary sweet voice, explaining that I mean no harm and pretending that journalists are not the heartless creatures that we all really know they are. However, when I get down to asking the questions, away goes the shyness and out comes the need to know answers. I feel that guilting someone into answering what they think is going to be a really innocent couple of questions, then posing ones that they do not expect gets more honesty, as they cannot prepare answers beforehand. Then, once the interview is over, I return to my shy and innocent ways and pretend as though nothing ever happened and that it was all in their imagination. I feel that this method works.

So far, I have only had one article printed this week, and it was a joint article with a fellow classmate of mine. Hopefully on Tuesday I will feel even more positive about my life choice. But if I don't, this level of satisfaction will do me just fine... for now. Soon I will need to move on to more challenging tasks... but that is a future that lies ahead far in the distance.