Quarterly Report: Spring 2024

Welcome to the second installment of Quarterly Report: a breakdown of my experiences at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Thanks for reading! ✌️

It might be the wrong place. Or it might be the right place, and her expectations were wrong. It’s impossible to tell.

– Day by Michael Cunningham

I’ve been writing this semester’s quarterly report in my head for nearly the entire semester and yet, as my semester came to a close, I found myself avoiding actually writing it. What had seemed so certain to me weeks ago no longer felt like it needed to be said or, perhaps, like the certainty holding it together had dissolved.

Then, in wrapping up a novel I didn’t particularly care for (sorry Michael Cunningham…), this quote reached out to me. I was in the midst of my “anxiety hour,” the soupy time between 2 and 4 a.m. when I ruminate on my to-dos, my long-been-done’s, and the unfinished business of my existence. To redirect my brain toward, well, anything else, I frequently pick up my Kindle and read. This novel was almost finished, I was uninvested in its conclusion, and then I read this and realized it captured so much of what I have experienced this semester. Here, I’ll try to explain.

What am I doing?

Here is a question, a really good question, that I have been asked by professors, mentors, professionals, students, and peers many times and ways over: What do I want to do in journalism?

I made my way to J-school following the idea that I could find a more meaningful outlet for my writing. This is a lovely pursuit but a particularly squishy goal, the kind that’s hard to hold and even tougher to market. In my time there, I’ve had to think more critically about what I want to do with all this education and loss of income. So I signed up for two classes that reflected the loose direction I’m pursuing: a features writing class and an editing class. I saw these as ways to get closer to magazine-style writing, the kind of journalism that, in my head, spans from delightful sensory indulgence to in-depth storytelling.

Features: Harder than I thought

My features class focused on writing two articles: A ~2,500 piece on a “complex topic” and a personal essay. I was excited about both of these prospects and went after them wholeheartedly. But I ran into yet another hurdle of expectation versus reality.

Remember, I came to J-school with writing as my central pull. I thought I was a gifted writer. I still believe I am a good writer but I’ve realized that I am not the writer I thought I might be. Not yet, or not ever, I haven’t really decided.

Writing my first long features piece showed me the sheer difficulty of finding and developing characters. Inevitably, my story became about the information at hand, and less so about the tensions at play. Tension is juicy. It’s compelling and helps drive a story forward. The gap I have between writing down I know to be true, or found out to me true, and the real, underlying human emotions, values and issues at hand—it’s larger than I thought.

Then came the personal essay. I was looking forward to making sense of a particularly emotional and confusing series of events I went through last year. And while it was clarifying to write about, I never really got all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel where I had something I was proud of.

These two pieces of writing rest comfortably in the Google cloud and I basically walked away from them. It was discouraging to find out the thing that has, in a way, defined my sense of self, is not quite at the level I thought it was. I admit, I gave up a little bit.

Editing: Maybe my new pursuit

What I did

What I learned

This is school after all, and I’m happy to share that I am indeed learning, sometimes the hard way. Actually, most of it has been the hard way—but in a field that’s more about “doing” than studying, that may be the best way.

1. Writing does not equal reporting

I thought that, as a capable writer, I would be well equipped to be a journalist. I was humbled from my very first assignment when my group kindly critiqued my first headline as “too marketing.”

I’ve since learned that writing is such a small component of journalism. Reporting is the real, difficult work of journalism and you cannot write your way out of insufficient reporting. This was one of the biggest leaps for me coming from a field where creativity is the hook and emotion is the motivator. Delight can carry a campaign, but it should not dictate a news story. 

3. Wield power responsibly

I walked away from this semester with a cemented understanding of how seriously to take this job. Part of this education included frameworks for how to work with sources responsibly and humanely. 

Most people—those who are not influential personalities, PR representatives or government officials—likely do not know what it means to talk to a journalist. So it is my responsibility to be transparent about it. That means being explicit about the information I am seeking, how I will or will not use it, and what might happen if a story gets published. It’s also important to share expectations around timing, process and outcomes. All this may come at the expense of getting someone to talk to me. However it’s critical to maintaining my integrity as a journalist, as well as the integrity of our industry. (Yes, we have integrity.)

I now have an acute appreciation for those who do choose to talk to journalists, especially those who risk their reputations, their safety, their livelihoods or their relationships in service of sharing their truths. Journalism has no power without you.

What I felt

On my way to my first day of orientation, I sat down on the train and was immediately informed there was an earthquake in the area and we would be stalled for “earthquake procedures.” It was an ominous, perhaps prescient, beginning to what was to come.

1. Extreme discomfort

I was warned, many times over, that grad school would be difficult. Because I expected academic difficulty, I felt ill-equipped for the influx of emotional difficulty of being in grad school.

Let me tell you. The whole “reporting versus writing” hurdle was a big one. Not immediately succeeding at this critical aspect of my proposed new career path was a seismic jolt to my confidence and self-image. It was made worse by the joy-thieving act of comparison with my peers who were either already published or eagerly prepared to dive into the trenches of governments and injustice. 

Reporting is not just a new skill but a new frame of mind for me. It conflicts with some of my more obliging and non-confrontational qualities. It requires a kind of dedication and tenacity I haven’t needed in my previous career. It forces me to constantly evaluate what I want, what I need and why I’m doing what I’m doing.

After explaining this struggle, one of the professors described what I was going through as “retraining my brain.” That phrase has served as a liferaft in the tumultuous waters of change. For all those who asked me how grad school was going and didn’t get an immediate positive answer—now you know why.

2. Very American

With a cohort of 41% international students and a large percentage of domestic students with racial, ethnic and political backgrounds very different from my own, my class is the most diverse environment I’ve personally spent extended time in. The experience has been fascinating and eye-opening. Though my husband has lovingly called me “Wonderbread” for many years now, it’s at Berkeley that I’ve really felt it. My worldview (and my understanding of journalism) is so much smaller than I realized.

Being able to crack open my mind and hear from my classmates about the vast external world beyond my inner one has offered an invaluable “education” of its own. I’m so grateful for this and to every student who has shared parts of themselves and their experiences in answer to my (often misinformed) questions.

3. Doubt, doubt and more doubt

My uncertainties have run the gamut from I don’t know if I can do this assignment to it’s possible that every decision I took to get here was the wrong one and my life is fundamentally misaligned with what I expect out of the future. Most of them can be summed up as questioning whether the discomfort and the hard work will be worth it.

I don’t have any platitudes or lessons to offer about these doubts. What I can say is I signed up for classes next semester. I’m still in it, still going for it, even if I don’t know the full picture of what “it” is. Perhaps I can attribute this to my curiosity, which still feels strong enough to follow. Perhaps I’ve embarked on a series of horrible decisions of which I cannot…wait, it’s happening again. Doubts persist, but so do I.

Follow along with my writing on Instagram @lisa.plachy.writes.