My Journey into Cannabis Journalism
In the spirit of being honest, I haven’t slept since Saturday. It was Thanksgiving break and I was back home in Tennessee spending a week with my family and friends. I missed my flight back to Denver late Sunday night, which is par for the course when it comes to me traveling, so I pulled an all nighter and got dropped off at the airport at 5 am. One layover and several hours later, my roommate is picking me up from the airport and dropping me off at DU for my first day of Cannabis Journalism class, and I am delirious as fuck.
I am a graduate student at CU in Boulder, but attending DU for this week only for Andrew Matranga’s Cannabis Journalism winter interterm course. I have been looking immensely forward to this moment ever since I gathered my (metaphorical) balls and opened my laptop this past August for the first time in over a year. After an unsettling hiatus from pursuing my masters in journalism and shunning all things school related, I finally had a remarkably enlightening “aha! moment;” I was going to be a cannabis journalist.
Previously, I hated journalism school. I hated going to class, my pretentious peers, the absurdly dense academic journals we had to read and the mundane topics I was assigned to cover either via broadcast or writing. The one thing I didn’t hate was that I got to live in Boulder, CO, stare endlessly at the Flatirons and smoke hella weed. Which is why it only took three months back in Nashville, after dropping out of grad school, for me to realize that not only was I going to do anything it took to get back to my beloved “Boulderland,” but also that I missed my legal pothead lifestyle and maybe it was more than just a past time for me.
I had managed to produce one story on cannabis during my first stint in graduate school at CU, and it was actually a hit. After that I went on to befriend a variety of folks in the industry and started racking up trimming jobs. The money was good, the work was easy, and the perks were unbeatable. And although it was hard to give in and finally agree with my parents, I knew this wasn’t a career and that little voice in the back of my head was telling me I was destined for something greater even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on it yet.
After a little soul searching and a whole lot of Nashville Hot Chicken, my “aha! moment” hit me like a ton of bricks and I knew my destiny was to get back to Colorado and try that journalism thing out one more time, but this time I was going to focus my studies on the cannabis industry. Being a cannabis journalist was what I wanted all along, I just didn’t know I could take out hefty student loans for it.
So anyways, here I am writing my first post for my week long #cannabisjournalism course where I hope to learn more about this wide world of weed writing and ultimately fulfill my destiny.
In class we covered an immense amount of information about the ins and outs of the cannabis industry and how to cover it. Also we looked at the schedule for the week, looks enlightening with a lot of cool people to meet and places to see.
