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Once every few months, or so it seemed, I would find myself in my college adviser's office, telling him how, really, it would make so much more sense for me to be an English major than to stay in the newspaper journalism program.

It was a ridiculous notion; I was talking to the man who was the cornerstone of my journalism major. I'm not sure what I expected him to tell me. But time after time I'd have my identity crisis, spill it to him, and let him reassure me that I'd be a fine journalist, that changing majors didn't really make sense, and didn't I want a better shot at a regular paycheck after graduation than those silly English majors were going to have?

I can't be sure he ever brought income stability into the discussion; 代写research paper that was always my own paranoia and the factor that led me away from English and into journalism to start with. But I do remember that every time my faith in journalism as a profession faltered, he was there to catch me and gently guide me back on the right path. He never pressured me, was never dismissive of my concerns. He always believed in me, and made me believe in myself even when that seemed like an impossible concept.

I came from a high school journalism background, so I knew a bit about how to put together a news story before I enrolled in college. But in my adviser's classroom, where I took all of my news writing courses and studied a few other media topics as well, I learned the reasons behind the rules, and the importance of ethical deliberation.

I learned about the wall between activism and proper journalism, a discussion in which my adviser, my mentor, used the example of a student many years before me who had participated in a gay civil rights event at the Iowa Capitol while she was an intern for the Des Moines Register, and was subsequently disciplined by the newspaper. When I became an intern for the Register later and while I was a writer and then an editor for the campus newspaper before that, I knew I had to squash any urges I had to speak out against the indignities of being gay in a gay-hostile world.

That was mostly okay with me, since I was still teetering in the doorway of the closet. It gave me a convenient excuse to stay quiet, and later helped me shape a decade-long career in non-activist gay journalism that I wouldn't change for anything in the world.

I read this week that my adviser, my mentor, the man who taught me how to love journalism even when I had second and third and fourth thoughts about my chosen path, is retiring after a long, successful career. I don't have enrollment statistics at my fingertips, but he had to have influenced tens of thousands of lives during his career. I don't know of anyone who took a class from him during his three decades of teaching who did not emerge a better person with a profound respect for the field of journalism and for the man who stood at the front of the classroom and delivered powerful lessons in a gentle tone.

I first heard of this man when I was signing up for classes before my first year at Drake University; someone made casual mention of the name "Bob Woodward" and I about had a heart attack. I wasn't much of a journalism scholar at that time, but I had heard of Bob Woodward. My mind raced: He was the guy who brought down Richard Nixon, man! He's a Pulitzer winner, and I'll be able to take classes fro本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。