If anything, I tend to be over-prepared for most situations. When a trip away from home necessitates that I take one bottle of a headache medicine, I usually take three. When I might need one tube of lip-balm, my purse is overflowing with four. So when I got to my headache doctor’s office this morning and he asked me if I’d mind being interviewed by a news crew from Chicago’s local Fox station, I found myself feeling woefully unprepared.
The news team was working on a story about nerve stimulators for chronic pain and since I’m hopefully going to be in my clinic’s clinical trial for the device/procedure, and happened to have an appointment today, my doctor thought I’d be a good candidate for an interview.
I’d like to say that I felt unprepared because I didn’t have a rehearsed sound-byte that would prompt other headache patients to beat down their doctor’s door to find out about the surgery.
Had I been thinking when I left the house this morning, I would’ve taken a complete change of clothes. That pink, boatneck top would’ve looked better on camera, and those silver hoops would’ve looked a lot better than naked earlobes. To compensate, I made sure my grandmother’s pearls were prominently on display and not obscured by the collar of my shirt. Mostly, I was concerned that my hair would look too flat and that it would be obvious that I’d been wide awake since 3:00 a.m. and hadn’t spent enough time with the mascara wand covering that up.
The cameraman wanted to be sure to film me while walking and talking to the reporter and through some miracle I managed to do both without running into a wall. Whatever composure I managed to maintain during the interview itself though, I quickly lost when they zoomed in for a close-up of me reading a magazine. To watch me read, you’d think I found Time magazine to be hilarious.
So the moral of the story is this: if I had journalism school to do over again, I would’ve taken at least one broadcasting class. Appearing poised on-camera can’t be rehearsed in a bathroom mirror.
