This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at App State chapter.
Some person whose name I’ve forgotten once said that journalists are just incurably curious people. Being incurably curious is possibly the best way to describe the way I have been my entire life. Ever since I was a small child I always wanted to know what the adults talked about and I wanted to know everything that everyone around me was talking about, regardless of it had anything to do with me.
Another result of wanting to know what was going on at all times has led to me yearn to be constantly learning new things. Whether it be skills such as driving stick shift on a car or taking a class on Mesoamerican cultures, I have always needed to be learning something new to keep me the most content in life.
At the end of my freshman year of high school I learned of a field that allowed for me to be constantly learning different things, journalism. As sophomores, students could start taking various extracurricular classes in order to allow some students some variation in their education. My English teacher, Mrs. Benjamin, mentioned that the journalism class might be right up my alley since I already loved writing. I signed up knowing that I could be on the yearbook staff after taking the journalism class, not thinking that I would find a new love.
The journalism class itself covered the basics of the field, such as the history, libel, and basic knowledge of computer programs such as InDesign and Photoshop. This class, at the age of 16, made me decide that I wanted to be a journalist and write for a publication like the New York Times or work in television for CNN or something.
Taking the yearbook class the next year only solidified my aspirations of becoming a journalist. I met all kinds of new people writing stories and taking photos at sporting events, it was perfect. In writing. you got to learn a small bit of peoples’ stories, a taste into another world that was happening right alongside of your own.
In the countless hours I spent facing my fears of speaking to strangers to interview and take photos for the yearbook, I found a new joy. I found that knowledge was not limited to the books inside of a bookstore or library, but within every new person that you took the time to talk to. I got over my fear while slowly falling more and more in love with writing, then it came all at once. By the time I had finished helping create my first yearbook, I was hooked. The endless hours I had spent editing at home and in class only fueled my desire to continue.
My senior year I was the Student Life editor of the Sakamow yearbook. I spent my spare time going through pages of my section and nit picking every small detail until I knew it was perfect to present to the student body in May. Student life was the all-inclusive section that had pages such as homecoming, spirit week, and band among others, the pages that students nitpicked at the most. I lost a lot of sleep during that last home stretch of production in February trying to get everything aligned to the pica.
I don’t know when I decided exactly that this was the career for me, because it came all at once it was like a wave over me that discombobulated me. Once it broke around me I knew that being a journalist is what I needed to do with my life to keep me content. To travel, to learn, to see the world exactly as it exists and share it with everyone, that’s what I was meant to do.
Now, I’m in my junior year of college. I still yearn to learn and to write. I want nothing more than to tell the world its story. I want to witness change and progress firsthand. Writing, reading and learning has been my passion ever since I was young, and finding a field of work dedicated to that means that there is a career to fit me exactly as I am, an incurably curious being, perfectly.