Freshman to sophomore year

    Bolstered by the HOPE Scholarship, I enrolled in the University of Georgia in part because of its fantastic journalism school, the Grady College. I soon made my way to the rickety downtown office of The Red & Black where I soon became a cops reporter. The independent paper not only gave me a living laboratory to reach 30,000 daily readers, but it also provided a decent paycheck each week.

    The summer after my freshman year, I worked for Appen Newspapers, a company that published four weekly newspapers including the Roswell Revue & News and the Forsyth Herald. In my first professional internship, I wrote about canoe tours and charity organizations while also helping with photography, layout, design, editing and even advertising. Because that was a non-paying internship, I got three other jobs that I worked at night and on weekends to supplement my income.

    My sophomore year, I moved up to judicial and then student affairs reporter, writing about everything from crazy crimes, SGA elections, tense meetings, famous speakers and administration scandals. After the Sept. 11 tragedy, I became the de facto foreign affairs analyst, writing about the September 11 tragedy, the Middle East crisis, U.S. retaliation and on-the-spot coverage of whack protests. 

(By the way, the reporter is me covering the Student Government Association elections)