My parents are the kind of parents that forced me to try new things throughout my entire life and for as long as I can remember I have enjoyed writing. My parents enrolled me in many different creative writing classes since I was 8 years old, definitely not something your typical 8 year old would do in their free time, but it slowly grew into my passion.

I grew up writing about anything and everything, I had multiple notebooks filled with stories of my alternate life where I had 4 sisters and lived in England, the dreams I had to someday be a veterinarian for exotic animals and running the United States of America from my beach chair in the Bahamas. From 7th grade until 11th grade, I lost my love for writing. I lost my passion and drive. At the end of my sophomore year, I enrolled in 2 English classes, my required English 3 and Journalism 1. I figured since writing is easy for me and I could get English 2 credits, why not.

The first couple weeks of my Journalism course was learning about newspaper, the sections that it has, the layout and proper grammar. All I could think about was what a mistake this decision was. I started to enjoy it more once we started assigning stories. At this point I was 6 months into this class and still didn’t enjoy it, but then my teacher introduced the Cub Issue, which is the issue of the Omega that the Journalism 1 students are in charge of. I was immediately hooked, I needed to be on the Cub Issue staff, and I was. I was the Sports Editor and I was in love. I wrote the best story I’ve ever written during this issue about stigmas surrounding sororities.

I rediscovered my love for writing, my passion, my drive. At first it was overwhelming how badly I needed to write and to be accurate, but it’s me, it’s who I am. After the Cub Issue, I knew I needed to be on the Omega staff. Before junior ended, I applied as a sports editor, and I got it. I was thrilled and couldn’t believe I was starting to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

As I started applying for colleges, I wasn’t sure whether to major in business or journalism, but I went with my gut and majored in journalism in every school I applied. As my senior year comes to an end I can happily say I have determined what I want to do for the rest of my life, next fall I will be attending Illinois State University and majoring in journalism.