When they tell you not to mess with Texas, they really mean it.
As an intern on the editorial board of a newspaper in Austin this summer, I somehow managed to provoke a minor war of words between two of Texas’ largest cities.
It all started with a post I made on a blog maintained on the newspaper’s website.
After I visited San Antonio for the first time, my editor asked me to write about my impressions of the city.
What I posted wasn’t exactly favorable. I thought the pint-sized Alamo to be a disappointment and commented that the streets are “filled with people who think high fashion consists of wearing a tattered Spurs shirt that doesn’t quite cover their expansive bellies.” Perhaps a little harsh. But I figured it was all in good fun. Besides, no one outside of my immediate family was reading my blog. Right?
Then I got a call from a news producer with NBC’s San Antonio affiliate.
The producer told me the blog had stirred up some controversy — to the tune of 150 angry comments in the past two days — and that his station wanted to do a segment on it. “We just want to have some fun with it,” he said. “I promise it won’t be too bad.”
Famous last words.
Later that night, with hundreds of thousands of people watching, the San Antonio news anchor smugly declared that I “was trying to sound sophisticated.” The reporter for the story went so far as to dip her hand in the River Walk to demonstrate it’s cleanliness.
And it didn’t stop there.
Under the headline “Austin intern talks trash about SA,” a version of the story — along with my picture — appeared on the news station’s website, just below a story about how heavy rains were wreaking havoc on the state. That story went on to garner well more than a hundred comments of its own, many of which are unfit to print.
There was one good thing to come out of the whole incident, however.
With graduation looming, one of the hundreds of commenters offered up a possible future scenario for me, just in case this whole journalism thing doesn’t work out: “I will take comfort in knowing that in your future life, you will be the most qualified journalist uttering those immortal words… ‘You want fries with that?’”
Senior Editor Steven Stein is a College senior from Los Angeles. He is editor in chief of the Emory Political Review.
A week after I graduated from Emory, I sat at my parents’ kitchen table, grinding my knuckles into my forehead. I was miserable. I had nothing to do. Life had been school, summer, school, summer for so long, but suddenly there was no school, and my summer dream of a career-making internship at Turner Broadcasting was a no-go. I had no money and no back-up plan. All I had was home. I had nothing to do.
Some of my friends moved to big cities, while others traveled overseas and posted their pictures on Facebook. They fled their parents’ houses for a world that boomed with new energy I could imagine, but not quite feel.
But then I started working at a used bookstore. It wasn’t a full-time job and it didn’t exactly pay the bills, but it was something to do, and it was mine. I clinked open registers and counted sales, shelved books and vacuumed floors.
I met a sweaty bearded man who loved Nancy Drew and a rural father who loved books on sexual positions, despite his five children and pregnant wife. Spurred by a passion for creative writing, I blogged under self-imposed deadlines. My life was not on pause after all.
I would have never guessed last year that I’d spend the summer after graduation in a used bookstore, or the fall thereafter mulling an offer to teach English in South Korea. That new energy I wanted? I found it, and I don’t want a back-up plan anymore.
Alex Pollack graduated from Emory in the spring. He is a native of Memphis, Tenn.
Three weeks ago in the center of Jerusalem, I stopped with a friend to get a quick smoothie. I confidently asked the vendor for a strawberry banana smoothie in Hebrew only to have the vendor laugh in my face at my American accent.
Getting laughed at for speaking Hebrew is not a typical event in my day-to-day Jerusalem life; as a sign of protest I’ve yet to return to that smoothie place. But I have adapted to the reality that the moment a hint of my accent is heard, I will be answered in English.
With Jerusalem swarming with American tourists, store owners are accustomed to speaking in English with customers, which has made my desire to speak Hebrew while in the country a constant battle against seemingly every Israeli in Jerusalem.
I became friends with an Israeli student at Hebrew University recently and was quite excited to get away from my American group of friends and spend time with real Israelis. The only problem was that he refused to speak Hebrew with me because he hates American accents. After approximately two weeks, I broke him down and convinced him to speak in Hebrew. Now we switch back and forth between English and Hebrew, and my horrid English accent is slowly fading.
I didn’t leave my friends at Emory to practice my English, and I’m not going to let the good intentions (or mean-spirited insults) of the Israelis I’ve encountered keep me from getting my practice.
Assistant Managing Editor Julie Lascar is a College junior from Houston. She is studying abroad in Jerusalem for the fall semester.
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