Old time Syracuse

In the second talking head moment for me in a week, I was invited up to Syracuse this past weekend to speak at the journalism school about travel writing–which went off really well despite being a somewhat surreal experience.

It feels like I was just sitting in graduate school, watching panels and dissecting the creation story of the unwitting journalist who was chattering in front of me, trying desperately to imagine a point where I’d actually be employed by a magazine or news outlet instead of being an intern for the rest of my life. Suddenly I had 80 sets of eyes on me as I was espousing my love for Joan Didion and telling people that they had to be good writers first–that being a travel writer was a perk for great writers who were smart enough to find interesting angles about places that travel editors know through and through. And that it was work–reporting a travel story is not vacation–no matter how good it sounds. It was kind of great.