I Blew Up My Career For A Girl

Would you choose your career over someone you didn't know?

I grew up a pretty lonely child. I had no siblings and my immediate family worked a lot so being home alone and eating cereal wasn't unusual in my childhood.

My grandfather was a truck driver and he'd take me with him on loads of trips delivering cargo across he west coast. I was an avid reader so spending 9 hour in a truck reading was fine with me. And when we'd stop for the night, my grandpa would fire up his laptop and dive into genealogy and tell me stories about his childhood.

He found out that we were related to my favorite author, Alexander Dumas. Then he found out that on my grandmother's side, I am related to Joaquin Murrieta, the man rumored to be Zorro.

Yes, THAT Zorro.

My family comes from a long line of people who fought for what was right.

My grandpa was an example, he didn't save a life directly, but he gave jobs to homeless people, help people with alcohol and drug addiction, and always left a sizable tip wherever he went.

When he died, 400 people came to his funeral. All with stories about how he changed their lives.

All I ever wanted to be was to be worthy of my family name. To earn a place next to my grandpa and Zorro.

I got my chance one day, by complete accident.

I was majoring in Journalism and had just started my third semester on the paper and first as an editor when we got a story that rocked the campus. A group of foreign exchange students were in a car accident, four died and the fifth survived with a broken arm. The survivor didn't want their name released and my team was told explicitly by the Dean and an Ambassador to let the story go.

I let it go, a lot of people on my team did. Most of us were around 20-25 and unfortunately, we had all experienced grief in its purest form. And we respected what this person must be going through, in a strange country all alone.

A few days later, we got a batch of new writers and us Editors got partnered up with the Newbie. I got partnered with a guy who had just done two tours in Afghanistan and got discharged a year earlier honorably. He seemed like a nice guy, he wanted to be a photographer not a staff writer so he was annoyed to be stuck with a writing assignment.

The newbies had to pick an AP (Associated Press) story that came across the wire and write one of their stories with an angle about our school. An odd assignment but we took it in stride. My trainee had picked a story about foreign exchange students who were harassed at State Colleges.

We went to the exchange lounge so he could interview a few students, he started talking to a few German students and I looked around the lounge. I noticed a small asian girl in the corner under a blanket sitting in a big lounge chair. She looked terrified odd my trainee when he started walking towards her. I stepped in front of him to stop him.

"Wait." I whispered. "Let me go first."

I turned and smiled gently at her.

"Hello, my name is Mae." I stepped forward and she shrank in her seat further under her blanket. "We're working on an assignment and was wondering if we could ask you a few questions? You can say no."

She looked at me and tilted her head.

"No, thank you." She said quietly. I told my trainee to go on and I turned back to her.

"May I sit and chat with you?" I leaned forward. "I'm terribly bored with this guy."

She giggled and nodded. I noticed she had a textbook from an astronomy class, and we talked about that for awhile. She even sat up and the blanket fell to reveal a cast on her left arm. I didn't ask abut it as I was engrossed in her story about one class where a projector caught fire.

Soon my trainee waved at me and I thanked the girl for chatting with me and we left the lounge.

Once we were away from the lounge, he grabbed my arm and jerked me towards him.

"What did she tell you?" He hissed at me.

"What are you talking about?" I ripped my arm away and shoved him.

"She had a broken arm!" He snarled and stood his ground. "She was obviously the girl from the accident."

"You don't know that." I snapped. "Plus that's not our assignment, that story was cancelled and we were told to back off."

"You're going to be a terrible reporter if you back off when people tell you to." He glared at me and started walking away.

I went forward and yanked him by his arm to face me.

"You're talking about going after a girl that just survived a car crash a block from where we're standing where four of her friends died while all she could do was watch. Not a corrupt politician who's threatening to destroy your career." I shook my head and walked around him. "YOU won't make it as a reporter if you think for one second that your career is more important that someone's life."

I stomped my way back to the newsroom, furious and slammed my notebook on a table and went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. My friend was inside chugging a redbull and reading his notes on his own story.

"You okay?" He asked me.

"I'll be fine, just the guy I'm stuck with is being a prick." I mumbled as I stirred in cheap creamer and took a sip.

Then the door to the kitchen was thrown open and our Professor stormed in and walked toward me.

"You let the girl go?" She asked.

"What girl?" I took another sip and looked up at her.

"You idiot!" She shouted. "You had the girl and didn't ask her about the accident?!"

"The survivor?" My friend asked as our Professor turned red.

"YES!" She shouted. "My office, now!"

She walked out of the kitchen and I sighed.

"This isn't how I wanted to start the semester." I said as I poured out my coffee and grabbed my notebook.

"It would have started better if you got the girls story." He snapped at me and stormed out of the kitchen.

I stood alone for a moment and tried to absorb what this situation was. Were they really angry at me for not exploiting a victim of a car crash?

I slowly made my way to the Professors office which was attached to the newsroom and as I walked through the rows of desk and computers, everyone turned to watch me and whisper.

I got to the office and closed the door behind me.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the Professor asked from behind her desk.

"I do." I answered firmly.

"We have the story of the year, and you let it go. Why?" She snapped.

"We were told by the dean to drop it, to kill the story, the survivor didn't want to their name made public." I repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"So?" She asked me in a snarky tone. "You would've broken a great story and had a lot of exposure to potential employers."

"We don't even know if that girl was the survivor. She might've broken her arm by riding a skateboard or falling out of a tree." I tried to keep my tone even, but I knew I was failing. "Plus, I'm not going to accelerate my career off that tragedy, it would be wrong."

"Immoral and wrong are two different things that you need to learn." She sighed and glared at me. "How can I trust you with other stories if you just let sources pass you by?"

"This wasn't an embezzling story of a politician, this was a person who watched four friends die in a new country they haven't spent a week in." I stood up. "Can you even imagine that or are you so narrow minded that you can only think of yourself and what a story can do for you?"

She stood up to yell back but the door busted open. My trainee was there staring daggers at me and panting.

"The girl was gone when I got back to the lounge." He stared through bared teeth. "Did you at least get her name?"

"You brought me in here so I wouldn't go back to warn her?" I snapped at the professor.

"At least he had the balls to go after the real story." She said as she sat back down. "Give us her name."

"I didn't get her name." I said.

"Liar." He sneered at me.

"If you don't tell us, I will fail you at the end of the semester." The Professor said too calmly. "Good luck trying to get a job at any newspaper or station because I will not write you a letter of recommendation."

"Are you kidding me?" I shouted.

"No." She said smugly, her thin painted lips forming a smile that could make a viper spit.

"I've spent my life working for this opportunity and you're going to sabotage me over this one story?" I scoffed.

"No, you are." She said and leaned back in her chair.

"I didn't get her name." I maintained a poker face and grabbed my bag. "I'm leaving."

"See you tomorrow." She said sarcastically as I slammed the door behind me in the trainees face.

I walked over to my computer station and my friend Anna rolled her chair over to me as I grabbed my stuff.

"Are you really not gonna give up the girl?" She asked me.

"No." I said quietly. "I don't have her name."

"You're such an idiot." She said and rolled away.

I grabbed my stuff and walked out of the room as quickly as I could. I stopped at a bench on the opposite side of campus and put my head in my hands.

I couldn't believe that I was being punished for doing the right thing. I thought about what the professor had said about ruining my chances of getting on a paper.

For a moment, I thought about going back and doing as they said.

I reached inside my pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper with the girls name and number.

I imagined what my life would be if I did give this to my professor. It had barely been an hour and already I was getting alerts that my stories for my section were being dropped and my fellow editors were already being snippy with me. Even a few of the photographers had pulled their pictures for upcoming stories.

I didn't want to be a pariah. I had been a lonely kid my whole life and being part of the news team made me feel for the first time in my life that I belonged there. I loved the challenge and the work and the camaraderie of it all, even when we had other reporters from other schools come in, we all felt like family.

But then I thought about that girl. She looked so scared and helpless, and that cast was only a couple days old. I figured she was the survivor after the trainee pointed it out. I looked down at her number and knew that I couldn't put her through the interrogation that I knew my Professor give her.

I slowly tore up the paper and threw it in a trashcan next to the bench.

I grabbed my backpack and raced to the science building, she was on her way to the astronomy class and I knew it was in the same room I had. If the trainee didn't have her name, I knew it wouldn't be long to connect the conversation we had over her textbook. Unfortunately, he wasn't stupid.

I got to the classroom door and saw the girl waiting outside the room with another friend.

I waved at her and her friend took one look at me and make a beeline for me.

"I swear if you're here to cash in on that story-" She started.

"No, I came to warn her that my news team wants her for the story." I shook my head. "I wouldn't exploit anyone for my own gain. I came here to let her know to be cautious, she gave me her number to meet up about the class but I can't. They told me that they're going to me on my case for the rest of the semester and I don't want them to figure out who she is."

Her friend looked surprised and tilted her head as she twisted her fact into pure confusion.

"You act like it's a major story." She said.

"My team thinks it is, and even if its two months from now, if they figure out who she is, they will revive the story and make her live through that night again and again until they get the angle they want." I explained, I felt like I was betraying my team but I had no choice. I knew how they worked, and even though we hadn't covered an incident where someone died, they revamped a story about a student that was an arsonist four times while he was on trial.

"What should we do?" She asked me.

"The newsroom is outside the admin offices, don't use the backdoor because that leads right to the front door of the newsroom. My team usually wears a press badge around campus so their pretty easy to spot." I gave her a few other details like the Professors name and to steer clear of her other classes.

"Thanks." She said quietly, she started to turn toward the girl when she turned back to me. "There have been a few people from other papers and the press that have been calling around trying to figure out who she is. I was annoyed when she said she gave you her number."

"Understandable." I shrugged.

"So, thank you for protecting her."

She held out her hand and I shook it.

I left the building and got in my car and went home, and even though my team never brought that story up in front of me by name I knew that they all held a grudge about it the entire semester.

My Professor made sure I got the worst stories to cover, and even when I wrote great pieces, the other editors would 'accidentally' publish the first draft that I'd post in our communal drive.

All the writers I got for my section would pull out at the last minute or send in the worst versions of stories that I ever read. I'd have four blank pages with nothing to publish and I learned to get really creative with puzzles and pictures and AP stories from the wire.

My section was the most popular with students and the stories I wrote, I always got good reliable sources. I was tasked one week with going over budget reports from each department to find out if anyone was embezzling money. It was a bogus assignment but I did it and even got redacted budgets from the deans assistant that were never public.

When the semester ended, even though my section was voted the most popular and successful among students and faculty, my team voted to take away my title as Editor for the next semester.

I was a broken person at the end of those 5 months. I was working a full time job and when I wasn't working, I was at school. I'd go before work to be at the newsroom at 6 am and sometimes I wouldn't leave until 2 in the morning when I'd get kicked out by security.

I put everything into the paper, I went in on weekends and edited stories and mocked up pages for the final print, I researched for my own writing jobs and went out and photographed events because none of the photographers would touch my stories.

My section was my one woman show and I had nothing to show for it.

My professor gave me a C and still refused a letter of recommendation. Over the summer, I applied for every paper and station and radio show in a 80 mile radius and no one would take me on.

I spent that summer wallowing and trying to stay positive about my prospects as a reporter but . . . I knew that it was over.

I was not going to be a reporter. It had been my dream since I was 11 and coming to terms with the fact that I nuked my own dream career was hard.

I dropped my journalism major and took a few core classes when the Fall semester began.

I was sitting in the quad one day, still depressed that I had ruined my career when I heard someone laugh.

I looked around and saw the girl.

She was laughing with a few friends who were all spread out on blankets in the grass and sharing food and had multiple textbooks open. She was so happy and playfully shoving someone who made a joke. Her arm had fully healed and she had a few scars that I could see but she was so happy and full of life.

I teared up watching her flourish.

And knew my problems were so insignificant compared to what she went through and she's still smiling.

If I had to go through that day all over again, I'd do the same thing.

I protected her from my team hounding her not just for the semester but on the anniversary of the accident, they'd call her and make her live through it all again if it was a slow news day for them.

Regret is something I try to live without and even though it cost me everything, I could never regret my decision to hide who she was.

That's the real me.

The person that will sacrifice for a stranger, that will protect someone who needs it no matter the costs, and that will do it without a reward or expectation of payment.

It's a story I keep to myself, some people think I changed majors because I gave up or that I just 'got lazy'. I think about explaining the real reason why but honestly, I don't care what they think. I know why I did it, and I'm glad it happened to me because I finally saw the world I would have been apart of. A world that is petty and dark and full of betrayal and promotions at other peoples expense. A world I could never be a part of.

The real me came out that day, and there's nothing in the world that will make me regret what I did.