I wish that I could say that journalism was what I always wanted to do–truth be told, I never knew that reporting was something I enjoyed; really, my addiction to news started at an early age when I was relentless on needing to know everything about well, everything! It wasn’t until high school that I began to fit the puzzle pieces together realizing that journalism was what I wanted to do the rest of my life. The first taste of reporting started when I joined my high school’s newspaper, I hate to be cliché saying that I had this feeling–this, pulling and nagging emotion that told me to join this competitive, rigorous, and invading profession; however, once I started, I couldn’t stop, I was thirsty. Not only did I want to barge in on peoples lives asking them a million and one questions–I had a reason now.

After I graduated from my institution, I entered into my junior college Carl Sandburg, still eager to pursue a career in journalism, I began to try and narrow down the list of possible journalistic career paths. Working with a newspaper for three years, I already knew everything that there was to know about news print journalism and I found it boring. For awhile, I even considered becoming a broadcast journalist on CNN.

Let’s fast-forward four years and one Associate degree later, and I’m now a junior at Eastern Illinois University, double majoring in Journalism, Africana Studies with a Creative Writing minor. I decided that magazines were a medium I wanted to write for–my advisors in high school told me every chance they got that my writing style was conversational so I thought, what the hell, why not?

GQ, Ebony, and maybe even Entertainment Weekly, are some of the publications I’d love to see my name on the byline of, I figure why not put my conversational, witty and creative tone towards a publication that could really help make me shine? Moreover, I enjoy reading those publications and there’s something about each one of them that draws me in, rather it be GQ’s provocative and racy articles, Ebony’s deep conversations about the black struggle, or even EW’s writings on celebrities. There’s definitely something for me in each of those magazines, which is why when I graduate from this institution in the next three years or so, I want my name on one, or all of those magazines.