Born to write?

From time to time, I drag out the little 5-year diary I kept during my high school years (well, it actually ran from mid-1959 through Dec. 31, 1963 when I was a college freshman) just to see what I was thinking and doing on this date in my personal history.
It's usually pretty embarrassing - filled with expressions of naivete and trivial concerns.
But on this date in 1962, on the eve of my senior year in high school, I drove to the campus of Purdue University where I took a battery of aptitude tests aimed at narrowing my choices of colleges and college majors.
I was intent on a career in music because that's where I found the most fun in high school. I was in every instrumental and vocal ensemble my small (490-some-student) high school had. I was an undistinguised trumpet and Sousaphone player and a competent singer (bass), but I somehow saw myself pursing a music major.
I also had an interest in psychology, so I figured I'd minor in psych.
So when I took the tests 43 years ago today, I deliberately picked answers I thought would skew the test in that direction.
Consequently, it was no big surprise when the results showed me destined to be a musician.
But guess what came in a strong second, betraying my more truthful responses.
Journalism.
Damn!
I hated writing. At least I thought I did. I detested writing themes in English class and saw the student newspaper - a 4-page mimeographed travesty - as a waste of time.
But I did journal, finding time almost every day for the better part of my most tempestuous 4½ years to scrunch an account of the day into the five short lines allotted for that date.
Once I got to Indiana State College (now Indiana State University) I discovered I was ill-equipped to major in music. I'd had no classes in theory and only a rudimentary music education in high school.
Psychology 101 left me thoroughly disenchanted with the subject, concluding that psychologists were mostly only guessing at causes and effects.
But I soon found myself hanging out with people who worked at The Statesman, the student newspaper. My first real job at the paper carried the lofty title of Wire Editor. That's what they called the guy who daily serviced the Associated Press teletype machine. I kept it fed with rolls of paper and tore the continuous strip of printed paper into stories, hanging them on wall hooks designated "state," "national," "international," "business," "agriculture" and so on.
Before long, I was writing stories - my first by-line was The Statesman's obituary of Edward R. Murrow, considered by most to be the founder of American broadcast journalism.

I wrote a weekly column and had the bad judgment to become production manager at a time when the paper converted from hot type to offset. For several years, The Statesman was printed by a company with facilities just off campus, with real union printers who knew about layout and composition. Changing to offset meant we got to set the type ourselves using a primitive machine called the Varityper. It was a labor-intensive task and the Varityper was a piece of junk that never should have been brought to market.
The result was an all-nighter for every one of the twice-weekly issues during the second semester of my sophomore year. I learned a lot about newspaper production and typography, but I also stopped going to classes and flunked out.
After laying out a semester, during which time I evaded the draft by enlisting in the Air Force, then was blessed with a medical discharge for allergies, I returned to ISU and my old production manager job. Predictably, my sense of duty to the newspaper killed my index. I think my only passing grade that semester was an A in editorial writing.
So the hook was set.
I succumbed to the destiny that was revealed on this date in 1962. I embarked on a newspaper career that I can't seem to shake. Yeah, I walked away from a 34-year job with the state's largest newspaper after the paper I loved was hijacked by morons. But now I'm every bit as involved in the work at Maria's medium-sized daily and I'm still journaling, but now it's called blogging.