Is there a negative stigma to covering high school sports?

[Fredrick]

Wow, I wasn't expecting this amount of responses. Thank you guys so much!

This is what I needed to hear. Yeah, I personally don't think I'm a loser for covering preps. I enjoy it and I've carved out a name for myself in the community. People in my community seek my input on high school sports stuff all the time and I do enjoy it. Would I love to get a pro sports beat one day? Sure, but I keep my expectations realistic, it's just frustrating that my friends' expectations *aren't* realistic.

I'm going to try to not pay attention to what my friends say moving forward. They are pharmacists making 120k a year, so prestige matters in their minds of what you do for a living. But I don't care anymore. I know not all of them actually enjoys what they do. I was just hoping some of you knew where I was coming from on this and I'm glad to see these responses. I needed a place to vent and hear some feedback. Thanks everyone, once again.

Like everybody said, who cares what people say? Do what you want to do in life but do realize that if you are in your 20s you need to take a long hard look at our profession and where it's going. Are you comfortable working in a profession that projects to be dying?

 

[Fredrick]

Can you imagine sitting in a sterile, stuffy office every day, wearing rubber gloves and counting pills 40-50 hours a week for the rest of your life? I can't think of a more boring, miserable job than pharmacy. Those guys might as well have a stamp on their forehead in all caps that reads "SELLOUT." The money is the only thing that career has to offer.

Interesting post. I would think a pharmacist has to be pretty locked in during the day lest you make some big mistake that could affect lives. I don't know if I'd call a pharmacist a sellout. There are tradeoffs. If a kid pharmacist is making 120,000 that means she/he can get a great house, support his/her family very well especially combined with spouse's income. True that person may have a much more boring job than you do, but the pharmacist works 40, not 60/70, the pharmacist gets raises, the pharmacist has job security and then some, the pharmacist has what many could term a good life. Not a 24/7 existence in which the newspaper could fold or have layoffs at any time. So let's say it's deadly boring. The person gets to Friday and boom! Weekend fun.

 

[Fly]

Can you imagine sitting in a sterile, stuffy office every day, wearing rubber gloves and counting pills 40-50 hours a week for the rest of your life? I can't think of a more boring, miserable job than pharmacy. Those guys might as well have a stamp on their forehead in all caps that reads "SELLOUT." The money is the only thing that career has to offer.

Yet another thing you know little to nothing about.

 

[Songbird]

There's only a stigma to it if you allow there to be one.

 

[Tweener]

Interesting post. I would think a pharmacist has to be pretty locked in during the day lest you make some big mistake that could affect lives. I don't know if I'd call a pharmacist a sellout. There are tradeoffs. If a kid pharmacist is making 120,000 that means she/he can get a great house, support his/her family very well especially combined with spouse's income. True that person may have a much more boring job than you do, but the pharmacist works 40, not 60/70, the pharmacist gets raises, the pharmacist has job security and then some, the pharmacist has what many could term a good life. Not a 24/7 existence in which the newspaper could fold or have layoffs at any time. So let's say it's deadly boring. The person gets to Friday and boom! Weekend fun.

Weekend fun? Yeah, I lived that life for a while and it sucked. I lived for the weekends and hated every other morning when the alarm went off. I won't fault someone for wanting to make good money, but I personally wanted something more stimulating for 40 hours of my life Monday-Friday.

 

[WriteThinking]

Sometimes, it's about timing. You might not care to be a well-paid pharmacist in your 20s, or even you're 30s, and would opt every time, then, for sports journalism.

In your 40's and beyond, it may very well be a dream job. Especially if it pays that much.

Seriously, perspective is key, and that tends to change with age and circumstances. If you've done everything you wanted to do in sports writing, and/or everything that your abilities/opportunities are likely to allow, I could see a life change to a new season that might include an (especially, relatively) well-paying pharmacist job.

 

[Songbird]

If I may add on ... while I covered local sports for 18 of my 23 years in the business, and loved every second of the grind, it got to be old and repetitive which is why I switched over to the news side.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Sometimes, it's about timing. You might not care to be a well-paid pharmacist in your 20s, or even you're 30s, and would opt every time, then, for sports journalism.

In your 40's and beyond, it may very well be a dream job. Especially if it pays that much.

Seriously, perspective is key, and that tends to change with age and circumstances. If you've done everything you wanted to do in sports writing, and/or everything that your abilities/opportunities are likely to allow, I could see a life change to a new season that might include an (especially, relatively) well-paying pharmacist job.

This is absolutely true. I think I was pretty happy in newspapers, up until the final five years or so when the chain's dedication toward print eroded fast. And the annual merit increases added up over time. But now that I'm in a second career completely away from journalism, I find myself half as wealthy and twice as happy. I never considered that employees might be treated with more respect by their bosses.

 

[Songbird]

Yes, but there's that certain something about being in a newsroom that I miss.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Me, too. Definitely. But a couple of factors there. I always said I missed writing -- on 13 Friday nights each year. I could have done without most of the rest. And second, those last five years I referred to weren't spent in a newsroom. The newsroom was a block away in a business park. The production staff worked in a concrete cubicle in the press plant.

 

[dirtybird]

Can you imagine sitting in a sterile, stuffy office every day, wearing rubber gloves and counting pills 40-50 hours a week for the rest of your life? I can't think of a more boring, miserable job than pharmacy. Those guys might as well have a stamp on their forehead in all caps that reads "SELLOUT." The money is the only thing that career has to offer.

Stable hours, flexibility, security. I might consider selling out for those things.

I was talking to a former employee at my first shop, where one editor lamented how so many good journalists had started only to eventually leave th business. That paper paid poorly at best, and he pointed out, people want to own houses and start families and actually see those families. And if they want those things, a sellout might be just what the doctor ordered (prescribed?)

 

[jr/shotglass]

Can you imagine sitting in a sterile, stuffy office every day, wearing rubber gloves and counting pills 40-50 hours a week for the rest of your life? I can't think of a more boring, miserable job than pharmacy. Those guys might as well have a stamp on their forehead in all caps that reads "SELLOUT." The money is the only thing that career has to offer.

At least two hours of my day each day are spent scanning nursing-home discharge notices and logging them. And I don't mind it at all. You get into a rhythm. (Plus, the rest of the day is a wide variety of duties, in and out of the office.)

 

[Doc Holliday]

Yet another thing you know little to nothing about.

I have three friends and one neighbor who are all pharmacists. They all hate their jobs. They have all told me I made the right decision following a career I loved. To each his own. I choose to believe them.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Sometimes, it's about timing. You might not care to be a well-paid pharmacist in your 20s, or even you're 30s, and would opt every time, then, for sports journalism.

In your 40's and beyond, it may very well be a dream job. Especially if it pays that much.

Seriously, perspective is key, and that tends to change with age and circumstances. If you've done everything you wanted to do in sports writing, and/or everything that your abilities/opportunities are likely to allow, I could see a life change to a new season that might include an (especially, relatively) well-paying pharmacist job.

Now this I can agree with. Well said, Write.

 

[dirtybird]

I have three friends and one neighbor who are all pharmacists. They all hate their jobs. They have all told me I made the right decision following a career I loved. To each his own. I choose to believe them.

There’s an interesting hair to split here.

I love my job. I don’t really like what my job does to my life. I’m sure they’ll say they hate their jobs and following the dream is great (the grass is probably greener for us all). Then if they were to be asked, how would you like working 3-11 Tuesday-Saturday mug of your 20s and always be at risk having to interrupt a night out with friends becuase some college kid tweeted he tore his ACL at 9 pm? Well, they might like their shift work. (And I’m probably understating the crushingness of a really dull job).

And I like that job, but I can see the appeal of taking two weeks in Europe in the fall. I’ve got friend who do it every other year. The only fall trips I’ll take are for weddings and funerals.

 

[Azrael]

While we're hair splitting, this:

Is 'negative stigma' redundant?

(Insert career on the copy desk joke here _____.)

 

[PaperDoll]

I love my job. I don’t really like what my job does to my life.

I love what I do: sharing stories. I don't like my job much.

 

[Jon Mitchell]

One coworker of mine from a while back said it well: "Big Time" is where you are. That means that where you are and what you're covering is the most important place in the world because, to those people you're covering, it is. Heck, I've been lucky enough to break national news covering high school football.

You can also develop some pretty strong relationships with the people you cover who, if they go far, can actually be a resource for you later in your career. I covered a girl by the name of Cody Pfau, who was the first girl in Colorado to win a first-round state wrestling tournament match against a boy. Just this week, she made the U.S. national women's wrestling team. Other kids I've covered have gone on to become coaches or professional athletes. Another kid I wrote about lost his mother to cancer and his dad to suicide — and I won an award for that story.

Just keep positive about what you're doing, because what you're doing, as long as you're doing it right, is damn important to someone.

 

[Tweener]

Stable hours, flexibility, security. I might consider selling out for those things.

I was talking to a former employee at my first shop, where one editor lamented how so many good journalists had started only to eventually leave th business. That paper paid poorly at best, and he pointed out, people want to own houses and start families and actually see those families. And if they want those things, a sellout might be just what the doctor ordered (prescribed?)

I love the flexibility of my job (working my own hours and often from home), and I still enjoy the grind and of course the writing. But I absolutely see myself eventually getting to a point where I'll have to give some of those things up and switch careers to make more money. I hope by then I'll have done just about everything I ever wanted in this line of work.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I was very lucky. Because I worked for an undermanned daily, I got to do the big events AND I did preps. I remember some of the great stories I got from high school events and the great moments (a freezing cold football playoff night and I had to wait to interview the star quarterback because the sweat from his buzzcut had frozen the helmet to his head) more than many stories I wrote from Super Bowls, Final Fours, and Olympics. So I guess my message is, news is where you find it. It's the most important game in the world because it's the one you are at.