Long days and little pay, but the years were full of wonder
By Mark Humphrey
June 10, 2007 9:12 p.m.
The fact that “The Wonder Years” isn’t on DVD is a travesty. Thankfully, a station called ION has been showing episodes recently, so I’ve been able to get my fix of Kevin Arnold. And it’s a good thing; without “The Wonder Years,” I may not have gained perspective on the end of my tenure at the Daily Bruin.
The realization came to me when watching an episode in which Kevin gets his first steady job, working at old man Harris’ hardware store.
The pay is lousy, and Kevin is almost immediately entranced by the idea of working at the nearby mall, where he can make more money and flirt with girls. By episode’s end, Kevin has ditched the dying hardware store, but not without guilt ““ he was just getting good at his new job.
This mirrors my time at the Daily Bruin. I’d wail about my stipend that amounted to little more than peanuts, about having to come up with story ideas, about having to edit stories that continually came in with the same mistakes.
And almost immediately after starting at the paper, I became entranced with working in Tinseltown and quickly shifted my interest away from boring old journalism to the sexy world of Hollywood as I became a film student. A female friend of mine said that this was for the best as “there is no less sexy career for a man than journalism.” Good for me, because I was going to make movies!
Yet seeing Kevin Arnold lament leaving that store taught me one thing. Sure, maybe journalism, like that old hardware store for Kevin, isn’t the future for me. Heck, maybe print journalism will be swallowed up by the Internet, like the mall ate up Mr. Harris’ store. And maybe I’ll meet more women, boasting that I’m a producer.
But none of this changes the fact that, for most of my college career, the Daily Bruin was my home. It was where I made some of my best friends and developed lasting friendships with people I love.
It was even where I learned that a man’s head can go through a plaster wall with little effort, that you won’t necessarily die if you take a shot of Jose Cuervo every 90 seconds, and that an army of crickets can indeed live in a conference room.
So really, just like Kevin Arnold looking back at Mr. Harris’ old hardware store, when I look back at my departure from The Bruin, I won’t remember that I suddenly had free time to write scripts and do what I really wanted to do. I won’t remember that I was finally free of silly meetings and needless stress.
I won’t find myself remembering what I gained when my obligation to the paper ended.
But I will remember what I lost.
Humphrey was the 2006-2007 Arts & Entertainment Music editor. He gets by with a little help from his friends.
