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.

Yet, his enthusiasm was the reason we remained friends. At least, it's the reason I'm still friends with him. I don't know about him; perhaps he still finds me attractive, which I find rather shocking. He would volunteer at service events for jobs that no one else would want and complete the task beyond what was necessary. He would even volunteer himself when he couldn't perform the task. There was a time we were working in Chinatown, and he wanted to help even though he couldn't speak Chinese. And whenever we had enough people helping with something and I said no, he would, to my dismay and anger, still jump in and find something to do.

I always thought of him as any other dedicated volunteer, just a bit quirkier than others, until the day he asked if I knew anyone he could live with. Whoa, I thought. Live with? I always knew he was a bit eccentric, but running away from home? This kid was mad. I asked him to explain his motives, but he refused. Finally, after being rejected by several of our friends whose parents were wary of having a gay stranger living with them, he told me about the brothers he has never met, his ignorant mother who uses him and verbally abuses him, and his mother's multiple husbands and boyfriends.

My first feeling was intrigue. This story was filled with drama and nuances. It didn't seem like the typical divorcee family. I wanted to know more. I began digging and whenever we had the chance, I would ask him more about his life. Why don't you like your mom? She uses me. How? She doesn't let me talk to my brothers. Our dream is to someday be a big, happy family. Have you ever tried to understand her? Yes, and it doesn't work. What about your father? He's a drunkard. And you know this how? He comes home at one and there's always beer in the fridge. Is this why you go to so many volunteering events? Yes. I don't want to go home. Ever read Angela's Ashes? Yes, and his problems are worse. I'm sure your mother would care if you ran away, wouldn't she? Yes, she would. But I don't care.

But I don't care, he said. At that point (we were sitting in McDonald's having an after school snack when I asked him), I was skeptical of his story, but I still felt a bit sympathetic to his cause and simply felt sorry for him. Yes, a journalist is supposed to get all sides of a story, but this was one story I was too lazy and too afraid to go deeper into. After all, I have a mother who doesn't exactly appreciate me all the time. Even though I was not intent on investigating this, he sent me transcripts of his instant messaging conversations with his brother and a copy of a letter they used to communicate with each other. After sifting through them, I began to doubt the seriousness of his problems. Yes, his descriptions of his mother don't exactly paint her as the ideal mother. I can believe she's anything but (I have that feeling too with my mother), but running away? Surely, he was just being a drama queen when he pulled out that one.

Then he actually did it. He spent a two-day break at his grandparents' house in Brooklyn. I walked with him to his house and watched as he quickly dropped off his things and then came back out to walk with me to my old home in Brooklyn, which wasn't too far away. It was then he told me the most chilling vignette of his life. He was five when his then-father threatened to kill him while he was sleeping. He wasn't actually asleep, though, and could see the knife under his neck and could hear the threats from his father and the desperate cries of "no" from his mother.

First, I blurted out the words "what the hell." Then, there was just silence. I took some time to process the story in my head. Perhaps, it was him exaggerating again. Or maybe not. I couldn't tell. I could no longer believe everything he was telling me was true. It is the nature of a teenager to overreact. I do it all the time. I curse at my mother when she gets on my nerves. I stress from essays and homework and tests as if I was dying from burnout. I get swept by political upheavals, whether they're in school or in real government. And here was a kid who planned to run away from his home because of abusive parents. Boy, where have I heard that before? Ah, from every teen drama show that's been on TV.

He was back at his parents' after the two-day break. It was then he begged me to beg my parents to allow him to stay either at our apartment or the basement of our old home in Brooklyn. By then, my sympathy was almost gone. I no longer felt sorry for him; he seemed pathetic. Pathetic because he was taking the easy, overly dramatic, teenager way out. Pathetic to think running away from a problem was a feasible solution. Pathetic that he would drag a friend into a problem that he himself couldn't stand.

I had thought of him as the one with a distorted view on his problems, but perhaps I haven't been too fair to him. I have had countless friends in divorcee families who have to cope with the same problems, some with problems even worse than the ones he has. Some of my closest friends have had to move and leave their friends and schools because of their parents' race for love and lust. In the end, I couldn't really do anything for him. I can't offer him any advice; I don't have any. I can't offer him empathy; I still don't know what he's feeling. I can't even offer him sympathy; it's almost gone. This is something he'll have to deal with. Without the little runaway stuff.

Like former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, I couldn't forget where I was on September 11, 2001. I was watching it all unfold and collapse from my elementary school window in Chinatown.

My parents were at work. My grandpa was immobile. No one was at home but my grandma and they were having trouble getting in contact with her. This was perhaps the one time those blue emergency cards we had to fill out at the beginning of the year were being used. I felt a sense of urgency when my grandma showed up and quickly led my sister and me out of the school along with a friend whose mother was at work.

Outside, everything seemed normal. No one was panicking like I was. There was probably one more police car on the street than usual, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. After we dropped off my friend, we continued on our way home.

When we reached Bowery, one of the arteries of Chinatown, there was chaos. The Twin Towers were no more than a mile away and there was dust everywhere. Paramedics were handing out face masks, and we each took one and put it on. There were people covered with dust. There were people staring with perplexed faces at what was now a dusty hole in the sky. An ambulance that passed by looked like a toy car that had been sitting under my bed for too long. My grandma shielded us from the bits of debris that were flying off the vehicle as it passed on its way to nearby hospitals.

When we got home, I turned on the news to find that the collapse of the North Tower had left us with CBS as the only channel available. I was more interested in watching history unfold outside my window than watching Dan Rather narrate it. Much of the downtown subway system was shut down, and for the first time in my life, I saw the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges packed with people other than tourists.

For the next few days, we were shown footage after footage of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing. We were shown footage of dying people, of terrified survivors, of dust and debris. It was nonstop. I eventually tired of listening and played with Legos for the week we were out of school. On the last day, we were shown the iconic Iwo-Jima-esque image of the flag raised above the destruction site. And we went back to school with the events that happened that day clear in our heads.

In the year after the attacks, my school received condolences in the form of teddy bears from schools as far away as Philadelphia. Life continued, but Chinatown was no longer the same. The streets leading to Police Plaza were shut down and smoke could be seen pluming out of the site. My family received condolences from the Salvation Army. It was where I picked out the somber-looking stuffed dog that still sits on my bed.

Every year, I visit Ground Zero just to remember the day my view of the world changed. My grandparents' generation had World War II, my parents' generation had the Cold War, and we have 9/11. The images, the giant flag, the staircase would all bring me back to that day. Every year, it seemed like it all just happened yesterday.

On my street corner, I would look at the hole and try to place the Twin Towers where they would have been. But this year, I couldn't do it. The image of the towers had faded in my mind. I couldn't remember where they were in that empty space. And for some reason, this year, I didn't feel the grief I felt in previous years. When we stood for the moment of silence, my mind could think of nothing. I could certainly recall the events of the day, but I could no longer feel the strong emotions that went with it. I couldn't invoke tears anymore, I couldn't feel depressed anymore. I even forgot about my annual trek to Ground Zero.

It seemed I had done in seven years what many others will take a lifetime to do. I had not forgotten the events, but I somehow moved past them. I didn't feel ready to give up the memories and the grief; I even felt guilty that I didn't visit the site this year and couldn't feel the emotion this year. But at some point, the events become a legacy in history, and I had arrived at that point earlier than I expected to.

Fast-forward a moment to 2008. I came home today empty-handed with no homework (I can hear you being jealous). So I did what every lazy American does when he's not obligated to do any work and turned on the TV. After flipping through the channels, I was disappointed to find the only things worth watching were cancelled reruns of "Yes, Dear," and it wasn't even that funny of a show to begin with. My other choices were "Arthur" and "Dragon Tales."

And I thought to myself, "What is this?" Broadcast television used to be at the mercy of children on weekday afternoons. I remember sneaking upstairs to my parents' room when I was five to watch the latest episode of "Batman and Robin" instead of doing my homework. Now I can only get dragons prancing with children in fantasy lands filled with talking ladybugs and Judge Judy (which are both pretty much the same thing). Whatever happened to good afternoon TV?

The weekday cartoon block emerged in the '60s on independent stations with the classics: "Bugs Bunny," "Yogi Bear," "Tom and Jerry," "The Flintstones," "Underdog." Back then, and even until the late '90s, cartoons were shown in the mornings, generally from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., and in the afternoons from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Kids would be greeted with "what's up, doc?" in the morning before they went to school and in the afternoon after a hard day's work.

Weekday cartoons hit their peak in the '80s and '90s. It was the Pax Romana for kids. Shows were starting as early as 6 a.m. and ending as late as 6 p.m. Fox, Warner Brothers, ABC, CBS, NBC, and various other combinations of call letters were airing weekday blocks and weekend morning programs. With "Pokemon" on Kids WB, "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" on Fox Kids, and "Doug" on The Disney Afternoon, by 1996, no one could foresee the fall of children's cartoons, especially not the children themselves.

Like an anvil pounding Wile E. Coyote, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 hit the major networks airing the cartoons hard in the money groin. While it loosened many limits on TV and radio, the act passed by Congress required every station to air "E/I," or educational and informative, programs. Most of the shows already on the air didn't fall under this criterion. Hence came the slow rise of PBS Kids.

Now what kid was going to enjoy watching that? With few children tuning in, cartoon lineups slowly began to go. Local affiliates began replacing their weekday afternoon lineups with court TV and family sitcoms. Disney Afternoon gave way and Fox dropped its morning lineup. By the turn of the millennium, Kids WB was the only afternoon block left. Their weekday lineup ended in 2006, ending the 40-year control cartoons had on afternoon TV and turning it into a wasteland for local affiliates to dump thier rerun garbage.

Why does Congress get to decide what cartoons are educational? I thought American education was all about "edu-tainment." Who says Daffy Duck swinging into a tree can't teach kids to be careful when playing in the park? Why can't Pokemon battles teach us about the values of courage and honor? And doesn't Yu-Gi-Oh teach lessons of friendship and camaraderie?

Why can't shows packed with action, drama, and adventure teach kids? After all, I would rather read Arthur Miller's All My Sons than listen to a college professor lecture about morality and patriotism. I would rather whisk myself away to the world of Tom Sawyer than have a teacher preach about the book. And I'm sure kids would rather learn from an action-packed funny cartoon than a dull half-reality half-lame show with a purple dinosaur or talking elves.

And there's just the fact that I miss these shows. There's so much nostalgia that comes just from watching YouTube clips of long-canceled shows. I miss coming home and enveloping myself in the world of Pokemon and Digimon. I miss watching the odysseys of kids just like me traveling with cute little creatures, battling others, resolving conflict, meeting people, and saving the world. These shows had drama, passion, lust, humor; everything we could look for in a good TV show.

All my friends dreamed of being just like the characters on TV, to be like Batman and uphold justice, to be like Ash or Tai and be daring leaders, to be like Yugi and be strong in the face of loss. Why take away these role models?

I should say Labor Night tradition, though, because I spent most of my Labor Day laboring (and I did not want that to become an end-of-vacation tradition). After spending the summer writing for journalism programs and volunteering and after an entire day of preparing for school and regretting not finding better ways to spend my last day of summer, I was ready to fall back on a sofa and turn on my old friends Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien.

When Carson Daly turned on, I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV (Daly is not funny). I was a little tired, so I reached for my Sansa MP3 player, turned on some music, and moved around a little until I felt comfortable.

And then started my Labor Day tradition: spending that last precious night of summer not sleeping but looking back at everything I had done this summer to the playlist of all the music I had discovered.

Other than the first song, I had shuffled the playlist. The next song was Arcade Fire's "Keep the Car Running." And, of course, it got me thinking about high gas prices and the fate of our economy in an age of global interdependence. No. Really, it got me thinking about all the trips I had made. All the new and exciting places I went to, like Canada. Yes, I found Canada interesting. From the snobs in Montreal who would casually switch between English and French in mid-conversation to the snobs in Toronto who bragged about having the tallest man-made structure in the world, Canada was interesting. And we just kept the car running. We rode six hours up to Montreal, made our way to Toronto, stopping at Ottawa and Brockville in the middle, and ended at Niagara Falls, where we, rather easily, hopped the border back to good old not-as-sissy New York.

Then came on The Killers's "All These Things That I've Done," and by instinct, I thought about...well...all the things that I had done this summer. There was all the journalism programs I did, all the stories I had written, all the new things and new places I discovered, all the interesting people I met, all the dragon boat practices, all the bike rides I had taken, all the hours I spent watching the Olympics (coincidentally, the song was in one of the Nike commercials). I remembered the story of the senior center, the awkward moment I met George Stephanopoulos, the new and quirky fiends I made, and the tears when Liu Xiang exited the stadium. And when the chorus came, the rhythmic "I got soul but I'm not a soldier," I remembered losing the dragon boat competition but coming out strong. And as the chorus died, I remembered the bike rides I took down the West Side past Stuyvesant.

And then I realized something. Good god, school would start tomorrow. And I was up at 2 a.m.