Recently, on the phone, my father pointed out the irony that I never did my homework at school and now I voluntarily write texts and have them corrected. I replied that it was a bit different, because here I can write about whatever I want and whatever interests me. One reason why I didn’t find school so easy is that it’s always the same place, and that’s associated with the feeling of being kept from the things I really wanted to do during school hours. My mother likes to quote my teacher, who is said to have remarked at my graduation that school always came last for me, that I prioritised my extracurricular activities and that he was fascinated by how I navigated my way through school. Today, I can only confirm this.
I didn’t let anything stop me from pursuing my interests, not even three weeks before my final exams. Meeting people and experiencing new things is more important to me than an exam. Two weeks were enough for me to finish in the top third of the lower half. I can retake the exam, but I can’t retake life. That’s why I came back from a three-week trip to Kyrgyzstan with my best friend just two weeks before my final oral exams.
Precisely because I didn’t let myself be dissuaded, I got a good grade in spoken Russian. That didn’t stop my Russian teacher from citing me as an anonymous worst case example to the next year’s class, because to me the school came last again. Five minutes late, without handouts, without a presentation, just with my language skills. After the exam, the examiner asked me if I wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten more points. I could only smile and say no. I wanted to get rid of these unnatural exams as soon as possible.
Since I’ve had nothing to do with school, I’ve become very interested in the content the school had to offer. However, this interest has been awakened by my life, and I wasn’t present enough at school to let it take my life away. As soon as I heard words like “exam-relevant” or sentences like “that’s just the way it is,” I lost all interest.
All right. Now I write articles; but the ones I want to write. Now these articles enable me to go out into the world, indeed, they compel me to do so. No more homework.
Since the summer, I have been driving the Omnibus for direct democracy. It enables me to go out onto German roads and compels me to do so in order to talk to people about direct democracy.
On the road, I use my voice.
In articles, I use other people’s voices.
I lend them my voice, just as I borrow the voice of newspapers and magazines. Just as I borrow the voice of the people who campaign for direct democracy. I am on the road on their behalf, and my mission is just one of many.
People are beginning to rely on me to find the words that are appropriate for the context. This is a responsibility I am happy to bear and one that I embrace with joy. At the moment, it is simply taking on a new facet.
As a freelancer, I can choose who I lend my voice to. Media professionals can also choose who they lend their voice to. The world does not need another journalist whose “quality” consists of writing what the media houses want to print.
It needs journalists who write what they can stand by when they look in the spiegel ;))
The only criteria for this can be provided by one’s own morals, provided they are embedded in a healthy community. Morals have become a luxury that few can afford. Unlike other luxury goods, morals are not particularly convenient and, for many, are even detrimental to business.
In communities, the biggest problem is always staying open to all opinions and navigating discourse, blockages and disputes. Communication is key. It’s the singlemost basic necessity for a democratic society of equals. I’m dying to meet one, by the way.
The world needs journalists whose livelihoods are not threatened when they write or speak something that strays from the ever-narrowing corridor of acceptable opinion and actually gets too close to the heart of the problem.
In an age of inFormation overload, where everything imaginable is rePorted on every day, it no longer seems appropriate to produce a profession that makes a living based on just one skill. This does not only apply to journalism, but it does have a particularly relevant function in society.
This would mean fewer conformist contributions from top students (not all top students are conformists, and not all conformists are top students) and also less paperwork for individuals in the branche. Spreading opinion-forming across as many minds as possible seems to me to be a very effective step towards ensuring that things that are not meant to be read are also written and published. It would certainly be interesting to read more from people who report on the fields they are involved in, or who take a closer look at neighbouring industries.
Freelance supplement as a “roamwork”, so to speak.