Why Journalism

 Journalism is a career that can demand a good deal of work each day for a reporter. It can require long nights, working weekends and even over holidays. But it's something I'm willing and ready to begin. 

I had always enjoyed writing in high school. Never finding it to be as much of a hassle as my friends and other students; however, I never thought to pursue it further than classroom assignments. Entering my first year at High Point University on a pre-medical track, the extent of my writing included lab reports and a few short answer test questions. 

After completing that year, I began to question if I really wanted to stay on a pre-medical track for almost another decade of schooling. I could not come up with a reason to justify the commitment I was about to make. When people would ask me "Why do you want to be a doctor" the reason I would give them was something they wanted to hear. I could not come up with a reason for me better than "I want to make a lot of money" and I do not think I could have been happy with myself later in my life if I continued on that reason alone. 

When I thought about what I wanted to be doing in about a decade, I kept coming back to being somewhere in the world of film and entertainment. I wanted to review films, cover award shows, interview directors and write about movies and Hollywood. 

Just before I left for sophomore year, my younger brother had his first day of class in high school, with my same sophomore english teacher. He told me how she recognized he was my brother and said she had high expectations for him based on how I did in her class, which I remember to be very focused on creative writing. I think that reminded me of how much I loved writing, especially about a topic I cared about. On my third day of sophomore year, I walked into the fourth floor of Smith Library and changed my major from exercise science to journalism, and I have never looked back.