Newspaper column
I meant to post my columns up here each week as I write them. Instead, I am posting the first two now and will post the third when I finish writing in in the next few hours or so. Enjoy:
Traveling along the bumpy roads of life
I was born in Anderson and raised 1.3 miles outside the city in Madison County.
Still, I knew almost nothing about the county in which I lived my “formative” years. I participated in 4-H and went to Mounds State Park, but that was the extent of my involvement. You see, I hated Anderson and Indiana, hated the small town close-mindedness that made me an outsider by virtue of my parents’ out-of-state upbringing.
I didn’t need to participate in it. I just needed to get away.
I ignored the rich history of my own home, the state that had lured me into cornfields in July to play hide and seek, the flat roads I could ride my bike along all day without tiring from hills and valleys.
I concentrated on my academics, on playing violin, on writing short stories and poems sitting under apple trees in my parents’ back yard.
Then, I graduated. I took my honors diploma and my notebooks and went where I always wanted to be - away.
I arrived at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. ready to take over the world. With short hair and hiking boots, I carried my boxes and bags to the fourth floor of Gardiner House and settled in.
So empowered was I by the courage of my adventure and the achievement of this small dream of heading out on my own, I skipped the orientation activities, opting to stay in my room and read in the window seat, overlooking the New England fall.
I was too cool, too experienced from attending a residential high school on a college campus to properly integrate myself into my peergroup. I started out as an engineering student, spending hours in the metal shop working on projects. Then, I headed toward anthropology and government, wanting to devour more of what was far from my home, far from the place I thought had driven me away.
I wound up an art major, studio to be exact. In it, I found a way to merge my love of the unknown, of the places far away and emotionally clean, while reclaiming my heart. Emotion and ideas of home could integrate with feelings of unfamiliarity and explorations of the unusual.
I took pictures of saw mills, sculpted eggplants and realized how much I missed the wide expanses of level ground in the Midwest. My senior year, when I got my first car, I would drive into the Berkshires or out into the country to see tobacco drying barns and fields of animals. I began my final project as a photography student by venturing into an abandoned mental hospital, culminating in a project called “The distance from Health to Home.”
Still, I was not ready to return. I headed off into the sticky heat of North Carolina. Having decided my college degree would enable me to do anything anywhere, I had no doubt I would find what I was looking for. I signed my first lease, changed my vehicle registration and waited. I sent out 30 or more applications that August. I spent most of my time at the library or reading in my recliner in my one-bedroom apartment.
In October, my big break. I became a professional pet-sitter. I learned the back roads of Mecklenburg County, NC in a way I had never known Madison County. I traveled from house to house, dog to dog, taking care of pets while their people were at work or on vacation. I administered medicine, I cleaned up messes, I wrestled with the big dogs. I drove with my windows down and loved the job more than any other.
In December, I gave it up. I decided I wanted a more consistent schedule with more consistent income. On December 30, 2005, I worked my first shift as a hostess at Outback Steakhouse. I was an art student cliché, my shoes caked in food.
I worked my way up to administrative work and waitressing. I made wonderful friends who went with me to the zoo and helped me care for my pet rabbits. I sat by Lake Norman and drank cold beers while eating hot dogs fresh from the grill. I picked up smoking, hosted small parties, but could not justify signing a lease for another year of working at Outback, far from home.
So I repacked my bags and returned. When the feeling of failure subsided and my parents had stopped laughing about how much more stuff I had every time they saw it, I began to settle in. Yes, I was back in my childhood bedroom. Yes, I was still working at Outback, even if it was a different one. But I had the chance to drive the back way to work. I could duck between corn fields now and then and know it would be OK.
On December 17, 2006, I flipped my car. The first car I had ever owned, the gift from my parents, was totaled. I walked away with seatbelt bruises and tiny glass scratches. I knew something was about to change. I just had a feeling.
In January, I met my husband. Ten months after we met, we were married. Through him, I found my home. I get to live where I can simply walk over to the barn and check on the family’s goats, sheep and alpacas. My pet rabbits have their own stall. The dogs run free on acres surrounded by invisible fence. I can pick from at least four ways to get from home to town, but I only really want to do it once each day. I love that if I forget to pick up milk at the store, I’ll simply get it next time I head in. I love the bumpy roads and ever-changing fields. I love that after all my searching, I have found what I was looking for.
I get to write every day, even when it is hard. I have the challenge of much of a county looking over my work, pushing me to do it right, keep it honest. Although I never really dreamed I would become a reporter, I love the many ways it gives me to say thank you to my new neighbors in my new hometown. Every day, I hope to do right by the people who entrust their stories to me. Every day, I hope to make sure we share our successes and support each other through our troubles. Every day, I hope to do it better.
Living in the middle
Having been a reporter for eight months, I am becoming more and more aware that journalism is a constant education.
At first, I joked with family and friends about not benig a “real jornalist” because I never took a journalism class in college. Although I read books about reporters, I suppose I never really knew what the job would entail.
In college, I was involved in residence life. After graduation, I looked back bitterly upon the many times my superiors told me involvement in the department would be valuable later in life. As I sent out my initial piles of resumes, seeking any of a number of jobs, the residence life experience never seemed to impress anyone. If anything, they wondered what it had in common with my studies, with my other on-the-job experience. It stuck out as something unreal to my potential employers, it seemed. While I had somehow believed it would be a mark of leadership and responsibility, it was just another line of ink.
As time passes, I recognize the value may not have been as a resume builder, but rather a tool of personal development. Through residence life, I underwent something of my own transformation.
I decided to join the ranks of the house community advisors and head residents because it felt like something I would have been doing anyway. From childhood, I had tried to help everyone get along. It seemed simple enough to just keep doing it.
We did team building excersizes and learned how to help the freshmen get acquainted. We talked about policy enforcement and role-played how to break up a party. Although that was useful to the daily needs of the job, it was the theory of the situation that left its mark on me.
We learned about listening skills and effective communication, and suddenly, I began to see how easily things can become miscommunicated. While much of it was meant to be a toolbox for college conflict, I realize now that I was learning about communication as a whole.
I realized that my young life had been spent assuming everyone else saw things the way I did, when that had never been the case. I learned to remove myslf from my own history to talk to someone in a way they would understand. Not to expect everyone to come on my terms.
Although it didn’t make a huge difference in the way I led my life at the time, I have come to realize the lessons I learned there have become invaluable as I become a “real journalist.”
I didn’t take classes on media ethics or how to conduct an interview. I didn’t learn to write smoothly in Associated Press style. What I learned was to see things from the middle.
I learned not to look at a conflict from where I sit. It’s not about what I think of the situation. It’s about listening to the various sides and helping them see one another more clearly. The lessons I learned in counseling a college kid through daily struggles help me to react calmly regardless how I feel. They fostered in me a sort of inquiry that prepared me to be a reporter, whether I knew it or not.
And as I try to navigate elections and contentious progress, I try to remember to listen. I hope that I can tell the story objectively, reflect people accurately and help my subjects understand one another better.
Traveling along the bumpy roads of life
I was born in Anderson and raised 1.3 miles outside the city in Madison County.
Still, I knew almost nothing about the county in which I lived my “formative” years. I participated in 4-H and went to Mounds State Park, but that was the extent of my involvement. You see, I hated Anderson and Indiana, hated the small town close-mindedness that made me an outsider by virtue of my parents’ out-of-state upbringing.
I didn’t need to participate in it. I just needed to get away.
I ignored the rich history of my own home, the state that had lured me into cornfields in July to play hide and seek, the flat roads I could ride my bike along all day without tiring from hills and valleys.
I concentrated on my academics, on playing violin, on writing short stories and poems sitting under apple trees in my parents’ back yard.
Then, I graduated. I took my honors diploma and my notebooks and went where I always wanted to be - away.
I arrived at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. ready to take over the world. With short hair and hiking boots, I carried my boxes and bags to the fourth floor of Gardiner House and settled in.
So empowered was I by the courage of my adventure and the achievement of this small dream of heading out on my own, I skipped the orientation activities, opting to stay in my room and read in the window seat, overlooking the New England fall.
I was too cool, too experienced from attending a residential high school on a college campus to properly integrate myself into my peergroup. I started out as an engineering student, spending hours in the metal shop working on projects. Then, I headed toward anthropology and government, wanting to devour more of what was far from my home, far from the place I thought had driven me away.
I wound up an art major, studio to be exact. In it, I found a way to merge my love of the unknown, of the places far away and emotionally clean, while reclaiming my heart. Emotion and ideas of home could integrate with feelings of unfamiliarity and explorations of the unusual.
I took pictures of saw mills, sculpted eggplants and realized how much I missed the wide expanses of level ground in the Midwest. My senior year, when I got my first car, I would drive into the Berkshires or out into the country to see tobacco drying barns and fields of animals. I began my final project as a photography student by venturing into an abandoned mental hospital, culminating in a project called “The distance from Health to Home.”
Still, I was not ready to return. I headed off into the sticky heat of North Carolina. Having decided my college degree would enable me to do anything anywhere, I had no doubt I would find what I was looking for. I signed my first lease, changed my vehicle registration and waited. I sent out 30 or more applications that August. I spent most of my time at the library or reading in my recliner in my one-bedroom apartment.
In October, my big break. I became a professional pet-sitter. I learned the back roads of Mecklenburg County, NC in a way I had never known Madison County. I traveled from house to house, dog to dog, taking care of pets while their people were at work or on vacation. I administered medicine, I cleaned up messes, I wrestled with the big dogs. I drove with my windows down and loved the job more than any other.
In December, I gave it up. I decided I wanted a more consistent schedule with more consistent income. On December 30, 2005, I worked my first shift as a hostess at Outback Steakhouse. I was an art student cliché, my shoes caked in food.
I worked my way up to administrative work and waitressing. I made wonderful friends who went with me to the zoo and helped me care for my pet rabbits. I sat by Lake Norman and drank cold beers while eating hot dogs fresh from the grill. I picked up smoking, hosted small parties, but could not justify signing a lease for another year of working at Outback, far from home.
So I repacked my bags and returned. When the feeling of failure subsided and my parents had stopped laughing about how much more stuff I had every time they saw it, I began to settle in. Yes, I was back in my childhood bedroom. Yes, I was still working at Outback, even if it was a different one. But I had the chance to drive the back way to work. I could duck between corn fields now and then and know it would be OK.
On December 17, 2006, I flipped my car. The first car I had ever owned, the gift from my parents, was totaled. I walked away with seatbelt bruises and tiny glass scratches. I knew something was about to change. I just had a feeling.
In January, I met my husband. Ten months after we met, we were married. Through him, I found my home. I get to live where I can simply walk over to the barn and check on the family’s goats, sheep and alpacas. My pet rabbits have their own stall. The dogs run free on acres surrounded by invisible fence. I can pick from at least four ways to get from home to town, but I only really want to do it once each day. I love that if I forget to pick up milk at the store, I’ll simply get it next time I head in. I love the bumpy roads and ever-changing fields. I love that after all my searching, I have found what I was looking for.
I get to write every day, even when it is hard. I have the challenge of much of a county looking over my work, pushing me to do it right, keep it honest. Although I never really dreamed I would become a reporter, I love the many ways it gives me to say thank you to my new neighbors in my new hometown. Every day, I hope to do right by the people who entrust their stories to me. Every day, I hope to make sure we share our successes and support each other through our troubles. Every day, I hope to do it better.
Living in the middle
Having been a reporter for eight months, I am becoming more and more aware that journalism is a constant education.
At first, I joked with family and friends about not benig a “real jornalist” because I never took a journalism class in college. Although I read books about reporters, I suppose I never really knew what the job would entail.
In college, I was involved in residence life. After graduation, I looked back bitterly upon the many times my superiors told me involvement in the department would be valuable later in life. As I sent out my initial piles of resumes, seeking any of a number of jobs, the residence life experience never seemed to impress anyone. If anything, they wondered what it had in common with my studies, with my other on-the-job experience. It stuck out as something unreal to my potential employers, it seemed. While I had somehow believed it would be a mark of leadership and responsibility, it was just another line of ink.
As time passes, I recognize the value may not have been as a resume builder, but rather a tool of personal development. Through residence life, I underwent something of my own transformation.
I decided to join the ranks of the house community advisors and head residents because it felt like something I would have been doing anyway. From childhood, I had tried to help everyone get along. It seemed simple enough to just keep doing it.
We did team building excersizes and learned how to help the freshmen get acquainted. We talked about policy enforcement and role-played how to break up a party. Although that was useful to the daily needs of the job, it was the theory of the situation that left its mark on me.
We learned about listening skills and effective communication, and suddenly, I began to see how easily things can become miscommunicated. While much of it was meant to be a toolbox for college conflict, I realize now that I was learning about communication as a whole.
I realized that my young life had been spent assuming everyone else saw things the way I did, when that had never been the case. I learned to remove myslf from my own history to talk to someone in a way they would understand. Not to expect everyone to come on my terms.
Although it didn’t make a huge difference in the way I led my life at the time, I have come to realize the lessons I learned there have become invaluable as I become a “real journalist.”
I didn’t take classes on media ethics or how to conduct an interview. I didn’t learn to write smoothly in Associated Press style. What I learned was to see things from the middle.
I learned not to look at a conflict from where I sit. It’s not about what I think of the situation. It’s about listening to the various sides and helping them see one another more clearly. The lessons I learned in counseling a college kid through daily struggles help me to react calmly regardless how I feel. They fostered in me a sort of inquiry that prepared me to be a reporter, whether I knew it or not.
And as I try to navigate elections and contentious progress, I try to remember to listen. I hope that I can tell the story objectively, reflect people accurately and help my subjects understand one another better.