My life took a drastic change when I stepped foot in a newsroom August 2006.
I was a student at Southwestern College and a couple semesters away from transferring to San Diego State University. With no intention of becoming a journalist, I enrolled in the newspaper production class as a resume builder.
I expected to design pages since I was, after all, a graphic design major at the time, but was assigned articles instead. My first assignment dealt with malaria research and my editor complimented my good spelling and grammar. But that article was perhaps the only positive aspect from that first semester at The Sun newspaper.
I hate to admit it, but I wasn’t the most dependable staff writer. I had dropped or “lost” a couple of articles and didn’t understand what the big deal was.
At the end of the semester I was surprisingly offered an assistant opinion editor position for the spring semester and I accepted. I fell under the supervision of a now good friend, but was pushed to limits that made me want to quit at times. I learned about deadlines, ethics, dedication and how to be responsible.
I didn’t transfer to SDSU the following semester. Instead, I became the opinion editor as well as the online editor after bringing the paper’s website back to life. I eventually held three titles per semester, editor of two sections and production manager.
I had invested three years at The Sun and it became the base of who I am today. I’ve won about 30 awards for my work and earned about $5,000 worth of scholarships because of the doors I decided to open thanks to journalism and The Sun.
Along with a couple of my peers, I was recruited to California State University, Chico, a campus with an excellent journalism program. It was a tough decision, but I packed my bags, said goodbye to my parents and moved some 600 miles north.
I took graphic design classes my first semester, but I noticed they weren’t making me happy. I missed editors’ meetings, discussing what stories to place on the front page, working until 3 a.m. and copyediting mistakes. I took journalism classes the following semester and it felt like home.
I had already been part of The Orion newspaper, but I had to learn to start from the bottom up again. It took a year, but I’m currently the new online editor for the fall.
I’m still figuring out what it is I want to do in the future, though. I see myself as a multimedia journalist, sharing quality flexibility in writing and print/web design.
Journalism is in the middle of an evolution as it makes its move into the Web and I want to be at the forefront of its adaptation to the new world. I love print and would choose paper over an electronic version of anything, but my contradicting interest in science and technology has prepared me for the future of journalism.
