The beginning of my intentions to become a writer, in the field of journalism, originates not long ago starting in my first year at UNC. When I first arrived to college I was very misguided as to how to live on my own and how to schedule my life. It wasn’t that I was homesick, but I didn’t know how to manage my time as well as the students who I saw studying constantly and succeeding past the university’s credit expectancy. Somehow I could never find the motivation; living in the uninspiring, old, dungeon-like McCowen Hall, now replaced by the newer and more hospitable structure on 11th Avenue, didn’t help exercise my writing skills.
Beyond the typical, melancholy, acts of maturity, that I assume everyone plays out at some stage in their life, I found writing to be incredibly accessible and soothing when needing to mentally remove myself from the dormitory. I began writing regularly in the middle of fall semester when the leaves had just started to turn and the large foliage that surrounded the main entrance to McCowen in a semicircle had wilted. The atmosphere had become tenser than when I first arrived; now that everyone had been introduced to the college life, we were all down trodden with homework. This kind of dreary aroma didn’t appeal to me, but being in Greeley there wasn’t much else to do but to practice writing.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I first came to UNC. I told them that I would be a “pre-business” major, but that never guided me into any real business emphasis or class schedule. It would have been more appropriate to put down “clueless” instead. Unlike the students who seemed more confident in their direction of study, I couldn’t quite find the niche I was looking for to commit my tuition and time. Looking for a productive way to spend my time I picked up a notebook and began to write short stanzas and essays to keep my mind from becoming slow. Writing kept me entertained and relaxed.
Soon after, I began with short poems posting them on my MySpace and Facebook blogs. During my freshman year I was much more connected to old friends from high school through the internet, but now most of my writing, in essay form, is kept private or submitted for class. My friends from the first series of four year schooling were very gracious in their anecdotes and comments. The annoyance was that I never received and constructive criticism, especially none as the help from the workshops I now attend in all of my classes. These days I can’t rely on the appreciation of my friends – as much as I enjoy their remarks – with the criticism of my work. I need serious critique in order to strengthen my writing in a classroom and business setting.
Even when I knew I wasn’t getting anything out of my old friends I knew that I could keep working on my writing abilities through my text books and writers manuals. Soon, I was able to turn one-line rhyme schemes into full stanzas without struggling so hard to find rhythm and content. These personal seminaries were my therapeutic method of keeping my mind on task and building a stronger voice in different style; this easily took my mind off my roommate living five feet away from me, who had just set off the fire alarm in the our room by burning his popcorn one November afternoon. With more writing my discontent of my living situation began to subside and I was able to focus better on my assignments. I thought at the time, “This will be my stable profession, something different that I enjoy but will have to work hard at”.
Freshman year, however, continued with different obstacles that I had to overcome. I had loaded my second semester schedule with twenty credits, including a business class that was nearly impossible to pass and an algebra class. I hadn’t taken algebra since my junior year of high school. The work load along with playing a club sport was immense, I would wake up to three to five hours of class, possibly a shower, a rapidly consumed breakfast at Holmes Dining Hall, and then finish off the day with another four hours of homework. This, along with the constantly rioting dorm, was overwhelming. My writing slowly went from random thoughts and amusement into something that might have come from an old man’s angry letter about any common problem. Now I was writing just to get things off my chest, this caused me to pick up some bad habits. Too often I would rush through my ideas, something I still have trouble with today, and not back up or cite sources correctly. Assignments became intertwined with eating and sleeping. There never seemed to be any time to waste.
Finally in the first five weeks I surrendered to the heavy curriculum and withdrew from algebra, I also continued to watch my grade in the business class wither down to nothing like an over dried prune. Impulse took over my planning of assignments. When I should have been meticulously planning the different arrangements for my papers and projects I instead rushed through with a sense of paranoia that I wouldn’t get all my work done.
This kind of anxiety drove my writing into further problems with my college research paper professor, Jennifer Boland, a talented graduate student who, thankfully, enjoyed my work but saw many errors that I would need to fix if I wanted to pursue writing as a career. Her class was very interesting and, later in the semester, would help me not only achieve better writing, but save a few of my grades from failing as well. Still, I could not escape the rest of my report card.
With a failing “D” grade-point-average and a blog full of overly descriptive poems and articles I had put myself in a predicament that would have to be solved next semester: if I was to stay at UNC, I would have to bring up my grades and stop losing so much focus in my ideas, my papers would have to be fine tuned from now on. This led to a new dilemma: I loved to write for myself but that isn’t always what the editor or publisher wants, and I later realized it usually wasn’t.
At the beginning of my sophomore year I found myself a new place to live with four other men I get along with very well. The basement I live in is small yet cozy and kept very quiet, it is easy to become concentrated quickly on an import assignment. I began to look over different voices and different mechanics of writing while sitting on my large bean bag in the corner of my boxed in study. I continued to work hard with writing as well as my other required classes and pulled myself out of the dangerously low end of the grading scale. It’s always important, I believe, to have a place where you can go that you know will you will adapt to quickly so that you can meet deadlines, or find a way out of writers block, or simply just to write for the sake of writing.
It still wasn’t enough to satisfy my motives in a career. I didn’t want to be an English major, and the title of “pre-business” was starting to get old. I have always had an interest in the news and, especially, newspapers but at the time I was still intimidated to try and publish any of my work – writing was still the personal that I wasn’t ready to unveil to anyone except my teachers. Even though I was still uncertain about what I wanted to do I declared journalism as a major and haven’t looked back. This was a completely different entity of language that I hadn’t experienced before. News writing is so strict in regards to content and structure that there is hardly any room to elaborate unless you know how to do it properly. There is a style of literary journalism, but I still have yet to master the techniques of smaller articles in reporting.
Journalism was irritating at first, I wasn’t accustomed to the way unnecessary detail was unwelcomed and therefore kept me from doing well early in my first two-hundred-level JMC class. Despite the frustration, I had learned to overcome the differences in writing styles and was able to control the way I wrote. The flashy adjectives were replaced by facts organized from the most important to additional information rather than different subjects, allotted to throughout the piece. This new style of writing has, and still is attractive to me and I am hoping to continue blogging freely again soon. I’ve realized that it’s best to write at least semi-publically if you’re planning on getting into the news writing field; your profession will be to attract the most readers to your writing and hiding it won’t help. You may even find that you have a specific subject that you are particularly adept at reporting. Most columnist practice blogging as well as writing for their paper help keep their skills up to par.
Writing is still the method I use remove myself from and emotions on particular issues or situations. I am a writing minor because I want to be a better writer not just from a journalistic style, but from a buffet of different writing styles and originality. I now enjoy the ability to write more in the higher level classes since I have completed most of my supplementary and introductory courses; however, it takes more time and effort to become a better writer. This year I have been taught in the most challenging writing classes that I have ever taken. Specific rules are so important and, sometimes, so ambiguous or common that I overlook them unintentionally, or I don’t follow the specific rules so that they don’t ruin the way I’ve intended the piece to come out.
It is the continuing study of writing that keeps my interest. I enjoy talking to different people in interviews and I am becoming more confident in my writing in all styles. I realize that I still have a lot of work ahead of me before I can consider a career, but I believe that I am taking the necessary steps and have the passion to achieve, as well as enjoy, in writing. Through practice with the Connection newspaper, classes, and blogging; this is how I intend to build my future. Looking back at how much I’ve learned from my classes and my own writing education I feel it is amazing how much influence the written language can have on someone’s vocation.
Posted by hein9311 on December 1, 2008
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