Learning the trade as an upcoming journalist

As a kid, I loved to write. Although it may sound a bit cliché, it’s true. I remember sitting in the car on the drive to my grandparents’ house and starting my own newspaper– “The Girl’s Gazette.” It was only one issue, written thoughtfully into my soft, zebra-print-covered, hand-sized steno notepad. No one read it but me, but that’s all that mattered at the time. I had written something that I thought had value.

Flipping through my yearbooks a while ago, I came across my fourth-grade yearbook from Sacred Heart. As a graduating fourth grader, I got a spotlight in the yearbook. What stunned me the most is that under what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had put “author.” How had I already known at that time that I wanted to write? 

I knew then—as I knew last year when I graduated high school—that enjoy writing. My problem was that I didn’t want to teach, I didn’t want a desk job, and my parents said I couldn’t immediately jump into being a book writer (too risky). So I turned my attention to journalism.  The field seemed to suit me: I love talking to people, I could get to travel, and my days would be filled with variety. Since then, I’ve also learned that there’s a lot of free food involved. 

As things heated up in Ukraine, I thought of the good I could do as a news reporter on the front lines; I added “foreign correspondent” to my list of possible careers within journalism. 

All of this sounded fun and enticing, something brave and new compared to the small town life of my childhood. I had dreamed big city girl dreams from the big University of Minnesota campus. But when I came back home for the summer and got a job working for the NRHEG Star Eagle, I realized I may have lost touch with the wholesome, good, brave people carrying out what may be seen as small town living, but aren’t small town lives. The people I have had the chance to interview have full, rich experiences, and exude confidence and love for the people and community around them. 

I am glad not only for the perks of free food and entertainment, but for the connections that I was not expecting to find. Even before I got to try out being a journalist, I should have anticipated the joy it would bring to interview one of my favorite high school English teachers or a wizened fellow band nerd.