It is the eve of final exams. As such, I find myself re-examining my career choice. This past year in school has been somewhat disillusioning for me. Some things were exactly as I expected and others were not. The past few months have been odd for me. I’ve drifted through the program with a boredom and melancholy similar to what I had during my last weeks in Japan; a kind of blasé that says keeps the superiors happy until I never have to see them again. To be quite honest, I never thought I’d last this long. I thought that, by November, I’d have flunked out and I’d be at a happy job flipping burgers right now.

I first started having doubts about a month in. I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before, but the average age of my classmates is 19. They still have a passion and a lust for this industry that I seem to have lost long ago. Their youth and their vitality make me feel so old just by being in the same room with them. And their immaturity is overwhelming. I’ve seen a whole 3-hour class wasted because they couldn’t stop giggling about the word “knockers.” But I’ve been told that such behaviour is typical of most radio station bullpens. I know for a fact that this nature has already endeared most of my classmates to the Edmonton radio market. While I’m in class studying, they skip class to go hang out with their favourite announcers. Radio is a social industry, and I’ve always been anti-social. The biggest shame in my class was when I won my scholarship. That means I’m doing everything wrong.

My biggest source of disillusionment does stem from the classes, though. As one of my instructors once said, we’re being taught to survive in the industry. My desire is to be an announcer, but that’s the one class I’m doing the poorest at. Among my problems is I’m told I try to hard to be entertaining. See, a good announcer isn’t about entertaining. It’s about just filling the void between songs. You get on the air, say what you have to say, and then play the commercial. That’s all. Being an announcer is actually quite a cold, mechanical thing. You’re not supposed to have presence or anything like that. You’re supposed to be conversational. You’re talking to just that one person across a great distance. You just slip in, say your piece, and leave.

I’m not so sure my salvation lies in another department, though. I think it was Aristotle who despised money and bookkeeping. He felt it was a corruption of the nobility of mathematics. I’m starting to feel the same way about writing for radio. My scripts are graded more for adherence to formulas and formats than genuine creativity. We recently learned all the regulations involved with alcohol advertising. Naturally, we must follow them when we write bar commercials. And, quite frankly, there’s only so many ways you can write a bar commercial. It’s all so similar and repetitive. I know. My instructor says that working within these regulations actually breeds creativity as you look for ways around them. But c’mon! When’s the last time a bar commercial you heard on the radio actually made an impact in your life?

But the only thing worse than writing these spots is producing them. In my interviews with producers, their constant complaint was that it’s the same thing over and over again. There’s only so many ways they can make a commercial. The only place they get to flex their creative muscle is in producing station imaging. You know, those are those commercials for the radio station that you hear between songs. But even then, you’re always under the limitation of working within the station format.

And not even news is safe from all of this. It’s not just enough to report what’s happening in the world. You need to have a catchy lead so the audience is inclined to listen. It has to have a local spin so your audience will stay interested. It’s not enough to know that hundreds are dying in Iraq. The audience needs to know what this means for them. An angle must be found so they’ll be interested. It’s not as much news as it is trigonometry.

Everyone in radio seems to be down in sales. They’re the ones out there selling the radio station to the clients. They’re pedaling the airtime and making sure the station makes money. Of course, everyone looks down on them. They’re perceived as being the sell-outs of the stations. I don’t know if it’s as much as being a sell-out as it is the only department in the station that’s honest.

Mr. Anderson once likened my radio show to an art. He found it strange that I have so little of my show recorded. It’s an art, but I do it once, and then it’s gone. Now, though, I don’t think I mind that there’s no record of it. Yeah, it’s an art, but it’s a corporate art. At the end of the day, there’s no difference between a good announcer and the abstract sculpture in the concrete courtyard before the 30-storey head office. It’s got the illusion of beauty and caring, but at the end of the day, it’s just another excuse to pedal stuff. We were warned from day one that every radio station is owned by a corporation these days. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, I’ll be a company man.

So, I don’t know. I’m still wondering if I should stick with my plan of just disappearing over the summer and not coming back to school. I’ve kept the superiors happy, so I think it’s time to put this childish dream behind me. We’ve been warned that the money in radio is horrible, so if I’m going to be a company man all my life, I may as well do it at something that pays well. I guess I should go study for those tests now. Just three days left, and then a future of burger flipping will be all mine.