When I grow up, I want to be a hitman.

The life of a hitman hasn't really attracted me before today, but - half on account of after watching Inception I have a slight urge to want to jump into people's dreams, knowing that the only way to wake them up is to kill them (thus, murder isn't committed for my supposed crime since I'm doing the exact opposite, theoretically saving their life - we wouldn't want them drowning or suffocating in their sleep now would we, so really I'd be a proper life-saver, as long as my methods of slaughter didn't involve water or lack of air) and half on account that one moment during my work experience today a co-worker went "on a job" - it does sound rather enthralling.



However, and this is only a huntch, I'm guessing it's pretty tricky getting a job in this particular line of work, not to mention that thing they call "the Law" and how this job may well go against it. I can't really imagine popping into the local job centre, filling in that piece of paper saying something along the lines of "What area of work are you looking for?" and writing down "Assassination" would get me very far at all. Besides maybe a prison cell for the night, week, next few years in fact.


When I returned from hunting down a hopeless lead on a story another co-worker of mine was doing (and by hunting, I mean shadowing the woman and virtually muting myself for the whole hour or so I was there to stand in awe of this woman's instinctive replies to this lead's helpess answers) I got back to the office to find my seat had been taken by what I could only assume as one of the editors, who was having a meeting with my mentor - who also doubles up as the news editor - and a few other big guys in the company.


Although it may have crossed my mind* to yank the chair from beneath her and walking off heroically back to my desk to sit down, I instead chose to find another empty seat a few desks away. The woman who usually sat their wasn't there, so I lent across to the guy next to me and asked where she was.


"She's... she's probably on a job". Five (technically six) little words that suddenly made the life of a journalist sound like something out of the Bourne movies. The sudden urge to just whip out some kind of deadly weapon and go on a rampage didn't seem too probable as a scenario upon which this woman found herself in at that time, but it sure as hell made it sound like it.


Now this whole barrage of thoughts may have only lasted seconds but, as Inception taught me tonight (which is probably a load of old codswallop), in a dream-state your brain works at 20x its usual speed, meaning that a second would feel like 20 and so on. Therefore, this moment of time felt like it had occupied a good few minutes of my life when really, it didn't.


It may be against the law and all, but I think as a future journalist of tomorrow I would do anything for a random work experience newbie to be in a similar scenario as I was, only to hear upon asked the reply from that of a colleague that I'm "on a job". It may well be simply visiting a shop to enquiry about the rising prices of Mars Bars, but in my mind, guns and gadgets will definitely be involved. Would make for one hell of a newspaper too.



*It didn't. Probably not the best idea on the second day of a new "job" if you can classify work experience as that to push a senior editor off a piece of furniture.