My freshman year I was assigned a project called the “Johari Window” in my oral communications class. The basic concept was that this window represented the perceptive consciousness of a human being. There were four panes that symbolized the things we could see about ourselves and the things others could. The lesson was simple, but important.

Bearing that in mind, I guess my latest piece of humble pie shouldn’t have been so unexpected, but it was especially unappetizing.

I submitted a proposal for my “project story,” which all the students at the Institute are expected to complete. After shooting interviews, tracking down subjects and talking to every family member, friend, journalist, janitor and delivery man who had ever even heard of my subject, I sat in the studio staring at a pair of monitors and digging for a story. The Institute’s video directors, my immediate supervisors, pulled me aside and explained in excruciating detail how my story got off track. It took a moment, but when terms like “stonewalled” and “glad-handed” entered the room, my ego greeted them on the way out.

Maybe the scope of the story was too big. Probably so. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions. I’m not sure. Either way the ax was dropping on my story.

It’s an ironic thing. As an editor, my job is to carve information into a story. That means a lot of cuts, so I should be used to having my work pulled apart. It wasn’t my editor’s fault. I had sensed it too. My observations were a bit more self-serving than theirs but the point was the same. I had no story.  I told myself to take it like a journalist, but it was easily the bitterest bite I had taken in some time. 

It didn’t kill me so I can only assume I’m a little stronger.   

Life in the Institute has served up some interesting things. I expected no less in New Orleans. Sometimes you just have to choke it down.