As an infant, I slept with a stick.
Yes, a stick. A wooden dowel, to be exact. I wasn’t really into security blankets, but that stick – I couldn’t live without it.
I like to think of that as foreshadowing of holding a pencil later in life, of being a writer. Sleeping with a stick is too good a story not to tell, so I have to use it for something.
I tried to fight the call of the pen. I said that being a journalist was the last thing I would do. My parents both work for newspapers, and I wasn’t interested. If journalism was the last profession on the planet, I wouldn’t do it.
Then Peter Jennings, my childhood hero, died when I was 17. That night, I sat in the bathtub shivering, scared to death I would become a journalist. I eventually realized my inevitable passion was communication and stopped fighting it.
So here I am, a third-year journalism major at the University of Florida with a minor in environmental science. I hope to work as a science writer, communicating scientific jargon in a way people can understand and be interested in.
I’ve worked since January 2007 for The Independent Florida Alligator, the student paper at UF. As of January 2008, I’m the research blogger – I write weekly about UF research.
I’d love to work for a newsmagazine like Newsweek someday, but right now, I’m just hoping for a job, period.
Unfortunately, journalism is not the last profession on the planet. But it’s the only thing I want to do anymore.