Heading into the home stretch

School ends Friday. I've spent thousands (and thousands and thousands) on tuition and rent, devoted hours and hours to classes and homework, studied myself stupid (believe me, it happens. Days when you couldn't find your keys if your life depended on it, but you can list all the sub-acts of the British North America Act in chronological order) and now it's ending.

It's definitely nice to not have to worry about schoolwork anymore--or at least it will be, if the web designer puts up the up-to-date content and my latest round of changes! But, I'm reluctant. This is my sixth week of working at the Journal, and in many ways I'm still stubbornly clinging to my Halifax and student life. I sleep rarely. I eat at weird hours. My cell phone still has a Halifax number. I don't even want to think about paying back my loans.

But, as of Friday, I won't be a student any more. I'll be a full-time, working journalist. I should be happy, right? This is what I've been working towards for the last four years! It's just scary.

I've learned so much in my time here so far, I've made contacts, I've written stories on everything from Elizabeth May to a giant poinsettia and everything in between, I've edited, wrote an editorial, attended every council meeting I could (and regularly managed to get lost), taken pictures, considered lay out options (though luckily my graphic designer is brilliant, so I just have to say what page things should go on and she makes it fit), and received my first complaints.

The worst part, and probably the most valuable lesson, has been the complaints. J-school has not taught me to have a thick skin. As a student, you often try to avoid those iffy touchy situations, because you can. Now, I've got to follow up on them, and sometimes when people are upset and stressed, they say things they don't really mean and call unhappy. Also, people call with complaints that have absolutely nothing to do with you and you have to take it in stride.

I've received two complaints, and 10 or 12 thank yous, so I'm averaging out pretty well, but for some reason the complaints seem to stick. The one was directly concerning an article, where someone later decided (the week after the paper came out) that they would have rather not spoken to me. The second was a change in status for the Keltic project between 2005 and two weeks ago, which aggravated one community member who decided we lied to him in 2005 or now.

I've learned to just listen to complainents and hear them out, because that often seems to be what they want, but it still gets to me. There was no real feedback during J-school, and you could sometimes forget that you had readers (if in fact you ever did!). I don't know if there's something the program could do to help with this or if it's just a harsh wake up call when you enter the real world, but it's certainly hard.

Other challenges I've started to be able to take in stride--empty pages (thanks kids for holding penguin day yesterday!), letters to the editor, unreturned calls, even corrections/clarifications. It's just the complaints that get to me. Even though I'm soon not going to be a student anymore, I still kind of feel like that young, naive, change the world kind of person who wants everyone to like me--qualities that may not be negative, but also don't always float in the real world.