Complex Numbers

I Can Read the Writing on the Wall

Describe a time when a personal failure became a positive experience.

Hm, so many choices. So... many... failures...

I could talk about the time I fucked up a pot roast in front of people, and discovered the world's greatest pizza when we ordered out. Or maybe all the times I fell off my bike as a kid before I finally learned to stay on (I can still stay on a bike. It's like riding a... well, you know.) Or being unable to convince Debbie to go to the prom with me so ended up with Sara (I might have changed their names to protect their reputations).

But no, I'll tell you about the time I decided not to become a newspaper photographer.



I learned darkroom skills before I got seriously into photography itself. In high school, among other things, I became the yearbook's darkroom technician because everyone else had a life. And maybe because I was the only one who knew what he was doing.

Mom got me a camera for graduation, and I took it with me to college. Joined the college newspaper and started taking pictures for them. We had to develop our own film, make our own contact sheets, and print our own photos to spec, and I was rather good at both ends of the business, including retouching the images on the fly in the darkroom.

So I thought, well, maybe this engineering thing isn't the best use of my time, and I applied for a summer internship at an actual newspaper.

In those days, that sort of thing was highly competitive, and I didn't get the position. I kept on with the college paper, though, because it kept me in beer money; eventually, I graduated and became an engineer. Still did photography on the side for a while, though. So. Many. Weddings.

Now, journalism is all but dead; photography is entirely digital; and everyone carries a camera, so there's nothing special about it. Meanwhile, engineering is still a thing that people do and get paid a decent wage for.

So, it's fortunate that I didn't get that internship. Positive experience? Sure - as an engineer, I ended up making a decent living and not having to be artistic at all. As a journalist, I probably would have found myself out of a job. The world still needs Clark Kent, but has no use for Jimmy Olsen.

Besides, it's just not the same when you don't have to play with fun chemicals to make an image.