In the tradition of (nearly) all the departing 2013 Business Times interns who have written farewell notes so far, I title my own with another gem from the Singapore Press Holdings lexicon.

STORY_EDIT is one of the many states which a news story can exist in, in the digital sense. Every story starts in STORY_NEW, the only mode in which the reporter is actually allowed to type. After the reporter is done writing, they must then "release" the document into the next mode, STORY_EDIT. The little square next to the story's name in that day's queue turns from red to yellow, to be passed to a copyeditor and then a layout editor (STORY_LAYOUT, orange) and then a subeditor (STORY_SUB, blue), down and down the line. This is a point of no return for the reporter; their story disappears from their screen and dissipates into the ether, and if they find a mistake they have to run across the newsroom looking for someone who can correct it for them before they get bombarded with angry emails and phone calls the next day because they've spelled the name of a chief executive wrong or misunderstood the definition of  "demonetised".

Everyone fears the "Release All" button. At least, that's what I would like to say. I fear the "Release All" button. The seconds just before release are paralysing, for these are the seconds where something is always wrong but what that something is is a mystery. These are the seconds in which I forget the last bit of data I want to squeeze in, or the way I wanted to word that final sentence, or the version of the quote I was supposed to use; in which words turn into tall towers of spotty black bordered with yellow and every number either looks wrong or far too right. In these moments, Nat looks over the partition between our desks that is lined with elephants and asks me if I've fulfilled my "staring quota" yet. I don't even remember who came up with that term for it - me or him.

(I tell him no, I haven't, and the last time I didn't fulfil staring quota I actually did make a mistake so I have to do this. And then a while later I turn to him again and whine should I release this and he says do itttt so I right-click and do it and he says congrats and there's a moment of quiet, exhilarated satisfaction before I start waiting around till the story goes into layout mode because the copyed might have made a mistake)

This is not a new feeling; it is the feeling I get every time I print a Group 4 IA, strap myself into a rollercoaster, decide what university to go to. But forever more, or at least for the next few months, I will associate this feeling with the phrase "release to edit mode". The feeling of making an irrevocable decision, that is. I will forever be attempting to use this little bit of jargon everywhere; it will join other gems like "point of no return" and "no turning back" in competition for rhetorical use in writing and conversation alike. When there's nothing left to be done and the button's hot under my fingers, I will have to stop myself from saying wow, this is like I'm sending a story to edit mode because no one else around me will know what I'm talking about.

BT will never leave me, no matter whether it shows through the media tags pinned on my corkboard, the nearly-full box of business cards I will never use, or my newfound social shamelessness and tolerance of using "said ____" instead of "___ said". That's the thing about life - you don't backspace.

They say it takes 21 days before something becomes a habit, and by god, has BT become a habit. Already I've called Joanna (ST intern, but similar procedure) out for using "edit mode" in a regular sentence. Already I've used "edit mode" in a regular sentence. Already I've edited someone else's writing in Microsoft Word and tried pressing F10 to enter draft mode, and CTRL-Xed a highlighted chunk of text because backspacing the whole thing doesn't work in NewsRoom. I have even tried to CTRL-J-CTRL-K in Microsoft Word (no one will get this except SPH interns, sorry about that). I occasionally try to figure out how much I've written in centimetres instead of words. Paragraphs always look longer than they should be. I think of length in yellow boxes.

I know the way up to the BT newsroom just as well as I knew my way to my classroom in ACS(I). I go into the bubble lift and walk to the opposite wall, and in the time it takes me to put both hands on the railing the doors close and I'm looking at the ground-floor garden getting smaller under my feet. The lift stops on the third floor and when I turn to the right towards the office, if I tilt my head left I can see my reflection in the library's glass wall as I walk.

My desk is sixty degrees to the left of the main entrance, next to The Stairwell Which Leads to Important People. The trepidation felt before I get close enough to my phone to see if I have any missed calls or not is always the same. My computer takes some three minutes to boot up so I plug my phone and its charger into the CPU, sliding an orange spiral notebook I got from a media event under the wire because it seems to charge better that way. I align the elephants which have tipped over in the night. I go to the restroom and fail to remember not to use the second toilet because even though it's the easiest to just wander into it also has ISSUES, and when I come back I can navigate the L from the side door back to my desk without even thinking.

The interns on the other side of the newsroom mosey over and we all stall wondering where lunch should be. I fall asleep from 3:00 to 3:30 pm. I get work as soon as I start working on a long-term thing. I procrastinate for eternity. Writing is frustration and paragraphs are never in the right place till the moment I finish the last one, then all is wonderful. This is without fail. Transcribing, however, is always horrible.

I refuse to take taxis and leave far too early for trains or buses. I feel the same kind of nervous before every event and every interview like it's an exam. I get worried when reporters write down things I don't write down. I unlock and lock my phone every two minutes to make sure it's recording properly. I space out. I try to catch up. I give up when acronyms become 50 per cent of whatever they're saying. I get back to the office and realise everything I need to write is already in the press release.

Funny how you can fall into the habit of something which is never the same twice over, how the days can still run into each other.

Journalism is like that, I guess. If you're lucky, you fall into the little divot between comfort and excitement, between easy competence and exhilarating variety. You think I'm good at this, and this is new, this is fun.
If you're not, you're tossed between utter boredom and frenetic terror. You're finding your feet all the time, and the next day your feet-finding's been thrown out the window and you've got to do it all over again. Some days you just get terror. Some days you just get boredom. Some days you get both excitement and terror. It's a cruel little cocktail, depending on who you are.

That's why I quit, I think, because the mix I got was strong and heady and lasted way too long into the night, but yet my head is pounding with I'll never do this again, I'll never do these things again, why did I have to end it, I could've stayed longer and in some ways it's the saddest I've ever felt.


What do I miss, then? Do I miss the job? I don't know. Do I like journalism? That's the question I've been trying to answer throughout this internship, and it's why I haven't written a single blog post on the matter. Some nights I return home on the verge of tears, ready to write a long tirade about how terrible the profession is and why no one should ever do it. But I never do, and the next day I've lost all will to. Suddenly the job isn't that bad. Suddenly it's awesome. I travel to events hating the job and when I get there I start liking it again.

I like writing articles just fine. I've always liked writing. Even after no less than 60 articles I still get a little twinge of satisfaction once I finish, because I've just managed to condense a 2.5 hour event into 30cm, or a 10,000-word transcript into 80cm, and it reads like a dream. Most of the time.

But reporting? That's a different matter. It fills me with nerves, no matter what I'm covering, and I always feel one step behind everyone else. My mentor says this will change with time, though. My supervisors are pretty convinced that I have "a passion for getting the story out", which is true, but it doesn't change the fact that during the event itself I can feel myself steadily losing stamina.

(The fact that BT is definitely a much much nicer place to work than ST doesn't exactly make things much more certain.)

In short, I've never had an answer, and I end this internship without one. When I left BT, all the editors told me that they thought I was going to get the SPH scholarship. I found it funny, and a little sad too, because I wasn't surprised in the least. They said "maybe it was the interview" and I said "I had a fever during it, so maybe that explains it" and they laughed, said "that's too bad". But really, all that fever did was that it made it impossible for me to pretend I had an answer.

Even so, not getting the scholarship is that I don't need to have an answer yet. That's a blessing. Plus, the editors made it clear that I could intern at BT whenever I wanted to, or even do freelance work. Leaving now doesn't mean I'll never be able to work as a journalist again. In fact, the door I'm leaving through is still open, and will remain open for a very long time. That's something I'm eternally grateful for.

Even though I might walk these halls again, it will not really be me. I will be older, I will probably be wearing makeup again, I will most likely be competing for appraisals and salaries and KPIs. I will no longer have the time to take MRTs when I don't want to take taxis, or even the luxury of quitting months before my next commitment. If I go back, everything will be the same, but also different. That's why letting go is so hard right now.

I suppose that's the main thing about me that makes people who really know me hard-pressed to see me as a journalist. I don't like change. I like to hold on to things. Sometimes I hold on to them till they start growing a layer of mold, though, so even I know that stasis isn't always a good thing. Every story has to be released to edit.

So even though I'm leaving now to find some time for myself, I'm going to keep trying to holding on to this for as long as I can, whether in memories or photos or the media gifts accumulated in the paper bags around my desk. For what a great thing to hold onto.