Phil's Tale: A Story in Three Acts

I thought I'd post last week's journalism tutorial piece about my classmate Phil. The idea of the story was to write a 500-word profile feature using a three act structure. We had to grab the reader's attention with Act 1, tell the story during Act 2 and then end with Act 3 linking the story's ending back to the beginning and "closing the circle".

Adventures in Academia 

If you’re in a hole and want to get out of it, the first thing you should do is stop digging.  As a plumber and gas fitter, Phil felt he was knowledgeable enough about holes to know that he was in a deep one desperately trying to climb out. He felt the need to do something worthwhile with his life, he just didn’t know what.

He began looking through the careers pages of the local newspaper and quickly found that he wasn’t qualified enough for any of the well paid and interesting jobs that caught his eye. All of those jobs needed a degree. There was only one thing to do. He’d go to university and get one.

But what would he study? He wasn’t sure what career path he eventually wanted to take. Spending years studying for a degree that left him stuck in another, albeit well paid hole seemed a waste of time and money. He read that studying another language was not only good for your cognitive function, it didn’t do your career prospects any harm either; maybe he could do that and work overseas somewhere.

Phil thought back to all the places that he’d visited. China is Australia’s largest trading partner and he’d enjoyed walking on The Great Wall and seeing the Terracotta Warriors but would he want to live there? It’s overcrowded, polluted and the language is very hard to learn. Maybe not Chinese then, what about a European language?

France was the first country he’d visited when he went to Europe and had always been one of his favourite destinations. He could just picture himself in the City of Light, sitting outside a little bistro near the Seine, sipping red wine and watching the world go by. A job in Paris, maybe at the Australian embassy, or working for a non-government organisation, sounded ideal. He could hop on a train and be in London in a few hours, catching up with friends and watching the footy at Twickenham. That would be perfect. He’d learn to speak French. Trés bon.

He looked at what else he could study. What about anthropology? On his travels he’d loved exploring new cultures; getting off the beaten path and mixing with the locals to see how they lived. What better way to get a degree than studying the science of humanity itself? He enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts programme at James Cook University.

Initially he was worried how he’d cope with going back to full-time study as a mature age student and he’ll admit to a few sleepless nights before handing in his first assignments. All that’s in the past now though and Phil is enjoying his time at uni. He’s found that the stress of a looming due date is nothing compared to the worries he had when he was self employed and trying to find money for his suppliers, in fact the only holes Phil finds himself in these days are excavations during anthropology field trips.