By Racheal Oke
Journalism is a good, great and in fact, a unique profession. A profession that comes with great honor and reward if practiced with great devotion. But, not everyone wants to practice it, of which I’m not left out.
Journalism is one of the professions that requires a great task and comes with numerous challenges. Although, there is no job without its own challenge, the only thing is, if the person involved is ready to accept the challenge and face it.
People develop interests for some things overnight, I can’t say what tomorrow holds, but for now, I know that I don’t aspire to be a journalist.
Let’s be sincere with ourselves, journalism is truly a great profession and I admire it, but I strongly believe that, opting for it depends on choice, passion and the dream a person has for it.
Right from the beginning, journalism has never been my choice of profession. Everyone has what they like or a profession they aspire to become, even at a tender age, but journalism is not something I had aspired to practice. Right from my tender age, I had always aspired to become a newscaster and that was because I loved the accent and the fact that the newscasters were being aired on television and radio stations.
Years later, I discovered myself and that was when I knew that being a newscaster was not even my major aim. I had begun to notice some situations or should I say, problems especially in female children that I began to develop interest in resolving, there were other dreams related to this particular one which I may not want to reveal to you now due to some reasons.
Don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying that if I take journalism as a profession, it wouldn’t help me achieve this dream, in fact, I believe that journalism could serve as edge for me, but I’m only saying that it may not satisfactorily help me.
For every profession, there must be an underlying passion.
A passion that makes the profession interesting, irrespective of the stress and challenges attached. What this got to show is that, I feel that journalism is a profession that requires passion and certain professional qualities that set the pace for a journalist’s ‘best’ level of success in the field and this passion for journalism, I don’t fully possess.
I feel that you may say that ‘people develop passion for something overnight’, that is why I said it before that, ‘I can’t say what tomorrow holds, but for now I don’t aspire to become a journalist.’ It is not my dream. Moreover, it is when I feel that I have fulfilled my dreams to a large extent that I can start thinking of doing something different.
However, people do say and I also know that, to an extent, I write well. I may not be Wole Soyinka or Shakespeare when it comes to writing, but I know to my own little capacity, I write well. And I know that if you will have to advise me based on that, you will suggest journalism for me because it could help me explore and improve on my writing capacity. But if you discover that the passion needed for the job is not there, would you not advise me to follow what I have passion for?
All I have been saying since is that, although journalism is a great profession, a profession that a person can boast of, it is not my choice, passion or dream to become one.
Name: Racheal Oke
Institution: Lagos State University
Department: Mass Communication
Level: 300
First Published 2018
