A Journalist's Path

Though school has been my main focus for the past month and many more months to come, my writing has not ceased. Though my writing may be sparse on this blog from now on, it is because I have moved on to the life of a journalist. Currently, I am writing for my school's newspaper, The Matador, and my school's food blog, Acquired Tastes. Our first issue is set to come out next week, so I am quite excited to see my name in print. I remember last year during my freshman year, I would always be so excited when I saw the crate filled with newspapers set outside for students to pick up every month.

Since reading my first issue, I would almost always read through it cover to cover, pondering the ideas that the writers wrote about. It often felt like a fresh take on some ideas, and admittedly, I liked looking at the pictures too. After reading the newspaper for a while, I thought, would it not be great to be like these journalists who get to write these articles? Later, I found out that freshmen could apply to be in journalism for sophomore year during second semester. Therefore, until then, I just kept reading. After a long wait, I was finally able to apply, and I got in.

It was strange though. When this year began and I went to my first few journalism classes, I felt nervous. I was with many people I never met before, and I was sitting there learning about news writing. Then, I had to try out news writing with a group of people. We had to write about the recent pep rally, and I was just stressing over it since I had no idea what to write or how to write it. I feared that my whole year would be me stressing over articles. However, as we started to work on the first issue, those fears gradually faded away. I believe it dispersed once my first article was posted online (as our newspaper also has an online section). I felt a sense of accomplishment and that perhaps I really could do this. Soon after that, I was set to write three more articles for the newspaper.

With those finished, I feel a sense of ease, and I realize that this is something I actually like to do. It is fun meeting great new people and becoming their friends as you are conducting interviews on them and writing articles that allow you to put your voice out there.