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Excerpt of Ten Things I Wish I'd Known by Maria Shriver
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Chapter One
First and Foremost: Pinpoint Your Passion

Be honest with yourself about it. Really think about what you're interested in. What you enjoy, what captures your imagination and gets your brain going. What YOU want to do — not what you believe your parents or your teachers or society or your four brothers think you should do.

When I graduated back in 1977, all I wanted to do was anchor a network TV show. Everyone thought I was nuts. My parents' friends told me to get a grip on myself and go to law school until I could figure out what I really wanted to do. Others suggested I should catch the wave that was surely going to wash up on Wall Street. My girlfriends all wanted to go to the big city, get an apartment together, and have a blast. Still other people told me to get out of denial, stop fighting the family tradition, and go into politics. All legitimate goals, but they weren't mine.

I wanted to make a difference in people's lives, but not through the law or business or politics or public service. I wanted to tell the stories of the day in the medium of the day, television — reaching out to the world with ideas, made real in words and pictures.

Now, how had I gotten so passionate about going into television news? I was bitten by the bug back in 1972, when I was still in high school. As the ancient history majors among you may know, that year my father was the Democratic nominee for vice president. I was helping out on his campaign, and I was lucky to get the rare opportunity to travel on the campaign plane. (Note: If you have the inclination or the opportunity to work on an election campaign, grab it. I guarantee you'll learn more about people and politics in this country than almost anywhere else your travels may take you.)

My father's staff stuck me — "candidate's kid, obviously a brat!" — with "THEM" in the back of the plane. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. You see, the back of the plane was where the fun was, because "THEM" was the press, the hardworking, wisecracking guys (and a few women) from the big national media — newspapers, wire services, radio, and TV. Most of them had covered politics for years, watching the passing parade of candidates and campaigns through practiced (some would say jaundiced) eyes. They were constantly observing and commenting, and their endless stream of quips and coverage — even cartoons — put the presidential campaign on a whole new plane for me. Literally.

Remember, I'd lived and breathed politics my entire life — had political discussion and debate served like mashed potatoes with dinner every night since I was a little kid. In a lot of ways, politics and making history was the family business. But that year on the campaign, I experienced firsthand something groundshaking to me: I saw how the newspeople put their fingerprints on history before it became history, taking something that had just happened in front of my eyes and giving it context. What the public saw was not the raw event I was experiencing on the campaign. It was filtered and explained and shaped by the journalists first.

And as we traveled the country, this colorful, wonderful band of smart and funny explainers and shapers was constantly changing. Reporters and crews from local media would jump on board for a while and then drop off — people with regional interests, like agriculture in Wichita or unionism in Detroit, who'd put their own spin on it. And I also got to fraternize with and observe some of the real heavy hitters of political journalism. They'd travel with the campaign for varying lengths of time, and I'd eagerly await their pieces in the New York Times or the Washington Post or the CBS Evening News and scarf them up.

Copyright © 2000 by Maria Shriver