Round 2

One recent morning, when I awoke from troubled dreams, I found myself transplanted into the cool dawn air of a desert. The chilled sand cradled my body as the camels harrumphed and my fellow students dozed in a circle of sleeping bags. When I then awoke in my bed in Durham, my first thought was to fact check.

The voyage that led me to that desert all transpired within the confines of feverish night visions, but what struck me was that I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if it had been true. Between Duke and The Chronicle, these four years have taken me places I never dreamed of going and showed me things I never expected to see. If attendance at Duke grants us access to a corridor full of doors, the skills I picked up at The Chronicle gave me the keys to open them.

Early on as a reporter I learned the importance of asking the right question, or rather that people will not always volunteer information unless you actively show them what you are looking for. This is not unique to journalism—anyone who has parlayed with Duke’s reference librarians while parsing the movable feast of Perkins’ stacks knows the importance of choosing your search terms—but this was my point of entry.

Once you invest the time and energy to establish a source relationship, though, the information starts to flow back to you, unbidden. Once, during a routine source meeting freshman year with Dean Chameides of the Nicholas School of the Environment, I walked in to find him visibly upset. He told me a recent graduate of the master’s program had just died in a motorcycle accident. This unsolicited insight set me off writing my first obituary and grappling with the responsibility of writing the last words to be published about a man’s life. Afterwards, I felt moved to attend the memorial service in Duke Chapel, mourning both the man’s death and that I never knew him until then. All from a source meeting.

When putting together a story though, it’s just as important to recognize that your assumptions are much like your parachutes: if you don’t check them before you launch, you might be very sorry. In one of many examples, I went into a recent story about Duke’s sexual assault policy expecting to hear that rape kits would clinch a Student Conduct case. Through my investigation, though, I discovered they rarely play a decisive role in cases at Duke. By recognizing my assumptions and discharging them I was able to get at the deeper truth of the situation.

Beyond that, the mere instance of a common assumption proving to be false often justifies a story of its own. How do you think MythBusters has run for 12 years? If a dean search doesn’t find a dean or a construction project doesn’t start when it’s supposed to, that’s when something really exciting is happening. And on a broader level, what’s more exciting than realizing that something you’ve always taken for granted actually doesn’t work the way you thought it did? If I had more time, I’d try to track course quality on an “assumptions challenged per class” metric, and see how far that gets me.

Lastly, and perhaps most indicative of my senior status, I learned that when an opportunity arises, you have to recognize that it may never come back. I won’t say you should take every crazy trip that catches your eye, because that’s a good way to end up broke and out of gas on the Florida turnpike, but recognize that some obligations will persist from week to week, and some adventures only cross your path once.

When I was news editor, I received reams of emails from across the country soliciting my news sense on behalf of this unknown artist, or that bimonthly southern ladies’ power luncheon, but one day something caught my eye: a group of Fuqua MBA students were going down to Ft. Bragg to train with the Green Berets as an interactive leadership development exercise. I thought, “That’s cool, I’ll see if anyone wants to write it.” Nobody did.

As the date approached I decided I’d had a lot of normal Wednesdays and had plenty more to come, so I woke up early and drove two hours southwest to the pine hills, to the point where “unnamed road” intersected with “the helicopter.” After winding my way through back roads, I rendezvoused with my military escort and the next thing I knew I was accelerating down the expansive length of the airstrip that services the nation’s Green Beret training headquarters. I was no expert on unconventional forces, and I saw there was no better way to disconfirm the overblown Hollywood stereotypes than by talking with them directly, which I had ample time to do that day.

Walking back into the office with dust on my shoes and a packet or two of leftover Army-Issue cheese whiz, I realized I’d spent my day in a way I’d likely never have the chance to repeat—and doing it again wouldn’t capture the joy of it anyway. Jobs and routines often matter for adults, but, working within a realistic framework, I try every day to do something spectacular that I’ve never done before and can never do again.

I see people doing this all over Duke, whether it’s figuring out how lemurs think, nailing a performance of Chekhov, documenting the lives of refugees on the other side of the world or even, yes, skiing to Shooters. For me, though, the best way to get that kick is journalism. Maybe this makes me one of Hunter S. Thompson’s jackrabbits, darting across the highway just because it makes you feel alive. Maybe this makes me a voyeur, getting my kicks by observing other people doing cool things.

All I know is if my profession sends me to experience extraordinary things and write about them for a living, I’m going to be happy. And that’s what I’ve learned at Duke and that’s what I’ve learned from The Chronicle.

Julian Spector, a Trinity senior, is the special projects editor and former news editor and health and science editor during his four years at The Chronicle. He would like to thank Franz and Ernest for their enthusiastic editorial advice.