An Architect, Of Sorts

Eventually, I had little time to indulge in silly plastic bricks and spent most of it doing homework. In middle school, I was the Asian math nerd who wanted, somehow, to be an architect. I always carried a number two pencil on my ear and a bag of math books in my arms. My backpack had even more books and probably two binders at most. I'd scribble numbers in math class, try to stay alert in history class, and fall asleep in English class. I never had an interest in reading or writing. I wasn't outspoken either and was quiet and constantly self-deprecating. So when I signed up for the opinions department in The Spectator, I had to become a different person, someone who wasn't shy or reserved. And someone who could write.

When I put my name down for the school paper, I didn't consider being a journalist. Actually, most journalists never planned to be journalists. They always started out as aspiring novelists or psychologists or historians but somehow got into the trade. I don't remember when I decided I wanted to be one. I do remember times when I was a kid and traveled around with a journal, pretending I was a reporter, but that was little more than a phase. It was just after 9/11 and every one of my teachers was suddenly preaching the importance of current events.

Perhaps I knew I wanted to be a journalist the day in high school I decided to carry a notepad with me everywhere I went. It was a gift from one of my journalist mentors, a former columnist for the Daily News. On the cover are my name and her phone number in case I ever needed help or inspiration. She defined the profession for me. Her advice was to listen to NPR when I woke up in the morning, carry a pad and pen with me at all times, and to be nosy. The latter advice stuck with me the longest.

Sometimes, being nosy can be thrilling. It can be thrilling to write stories, especially when you have to confront the principal of the school to get to the heart of one. It's thrilling to sit in his office with your knees nervously bouncing up and down on the chair and your hands shaking while you try to ignore the anger in his voice as he talks about his latest policy to boost students' averages. You try to scribble as much as you can on your notepad, but he's always talking too fast and you're just too nervous to write anything cohesive, so you start to write in quick shorthand script. You try not to look at him, but you have to keep strong in the face of evil--even when that face is staring straight at you with the same stern look.

You keep throwing stuttered questions and he keeps throwing one-word answers. You both don't want to be there, but you have to get the information down before the 8 p.m. deadline. Finally, you call done, say thanks, and leave hurriedly. You pass by his secretary, who smiles widely and tells you to come back soon, even though, at that moment, you don't really feel like you want to. You stare at your notes a period later and try to figure out where all of the chicken scratch came from.

And then there are the times when it's not thrilling, when asking questions doesn't feel like a job but almost feels like a part of you. I was sitting with my friend at McDonald's after school one afternoon. That day, I had lost my notepad and was feeling upset. My friend wasn't having a good day either. He was contemplating running away from home that day. Immediately, I was interested and started asking him questions.

Why? To where? Is it because of your parents? What did they do? They're divorced? For how long? How many brothers do you have? Why won't your mom let you talk to them? Have you ever read Angela's Ashes? Can you really say your problems are that bad? Why run away?

I had lost my notepad, but I kept a mental record of all his answers and noted every single word he said to me. At the end, when we finished our burgers, I asked if I could write an article about him for this blog. He said no, but I persisted until he agreed to let me publish it with anonymity.

That was one time being a journalist felt innate. Other times, I carried a queasy feeling, the kind of feeling you get before you ask someone out on a date for the first time. I carried the feeling with me before interviews, I carried it right before I sat down to write my articles, I carried it when I was approaching my angry editors. I still carry it two years after I joined the paper. Sometimes, it would feel wrong to be nosy, but other times, you would feel like you were doing the right thing, as if you had a grand duty and were providing people with a public service.

I get in over my head sometimes. Yes, I am a teenager. I, like many teenagers, love to protest, whether the cause be students' rights or immigrants' rights. I sometimes dream of the day a coup d'état comes in this school no matter how ridiculous that sounds. I monitor every policy that feeds out of the principal's office; I can even find a reliable tipster in the librarian. I rally at political campaigns with politicians I know little about. I write fiery articles against teachers because sometimes, they just piss me off that much that I have to find some fault to attack. I also carry with me a cell phone and an iPod.

Wild times, these teenage years. A feeling of self-importance. It comes with a student journalist. We're naïve, immature, and think that we've gone through everything. Sometimes, though, we get the feeling that our job really is to serve the people. I once did a story on a prominent senior center in Chinatown that was going to lose most of its funding because of budget constraints. When I showed the story to my mentor, she looked at it and shook her head. She asked me where the people were, where the human side of the story was. I had gotten all these numbers, all the inside information from politicians I had connections with, but there were no people. She slapped the article on the table and told me to go out and talk to some senior citizens.

That queasy feeling came back. The uneasy feeling I still get before interviews. Would these old folks be cranky old folks or the nice grandma types? I nervously went into the center with my bag clutched close to my side, and I stared at all the seniors who stared back at me. I lightly knocked on the office door, which seemed tall and intimidating. A 30-something opened the door, and I saw they had already prepared interviewees. In their conference room. I felt like a real journalist.

There was a moment of awkward silence before one of the 80-year-olds said, "You don't belong here. You're not even 50 yet." And that calmed me down. The queasy feeling I carried into the conference room slipped out through the window, and I start throwing out questions about these people's lives, their families, their friends. At some point, I just stopped taking notes, turned on a voice recorder, and just leaned in and listened. There was a grandma who lost her entire family in World War II and now volunteers as a nurse. There was a grandpa who travels from Brooklyn every day to help cook at the center. When I sat down to rewrite the article, I felt like Bob Woodward. I wasn't exactly uncovering a public scandal, but I felt proud to have done a story like that, a story that mattered.

After writing so many stories, I still can't explain to my friends what a journalist does. Sometimes, when the workload is heavy and I have to run home to finish up an article, I hurriedly tell them, "It's like dating a girl. You ask questions and pretend to care." Other times, I give them some of the big names, Edward Murrow, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and they continue to stare blankly. I tell them about some of their accomplishments, the scandals revealed, the corruption uncovered, the stories brought to light, and they still stare with nonchalance. I eventually give up and tell them plainly that it's what they see on the six o'clock news. I walk away, disappointed at how trivially I defined a trade that did so much more than inform naïve viewers of stabbings in Harlem and Paris Hilton's purses.

Then, there's the more dreaded question of why I wanted to be a journalist in the first place. I can never answer that question fully, but I tell people it's because I want to build something meaningful, something that will last. I like to piece together words and quotes into an article that says something. I like to look at the finished product and tell myself, "I created that." And when I can get at least one person to understand what I created, I'm happy.