Dear New York City: Thank You
It wasn’t the rejection from the Boston Globe. Or the Dow Jones News Fund program. It wasn’t the acceptance from Knight-CUNYJ, either. Or O, The Oprah Magazine. It was the moment on a rooftop overlooking the New York City skyline when I realized I wasn’t pursuing the life I wanted.
Six weeks had passed since I arrived in New York and began my internships with the City of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism and O, The Oprah Magazine. In that time, I learned about more than journalism, the subway system, cost of food and people to avoid on the streets — I learned about myself. I learned I had lost my passion in journalism.
I chose journalism to impact the world with my stories. I chose journalism to learn about people. I chose journalism to give people a voice.
But spending the last three years sitting in journalism classes, reading about issues in the world, such as rape, violence, homelessness and immigration have grown heavy on me. While these stories inspired my own writing at first, I began to feel like they had no impact. Sure, I was writing about people and their issues, feelings or accomplishments, but who was reading it? If I did have readers, was it impacting them in their own lives? Who was I helping?
With the internet and social media, people tend to read stories headlines, share them and move on. If people aren’t reading beyond a headline — they probably more or less agree with — then where is the impact? I felt as if I was wasting my time. Instead of helping these rape and violence victims, volunteering at homeless shelters or informational sessions for undocumented immigrants, I was tracking them down, asking for their story to later have a letter grade determine how important their story was.
The issues in the world don’t arise when the story is pitched and die when it’s turned in to an editor. They also don’t just arise when a story is published and die when it gets lost in the shuffle of 24/7 content. They are constant. They are real. I no longer wanted to make a career out of writing about these issues when I could more easily go out into the community and make a bigger difference.
As I realized this on the roof, I cried. I couldn’t tell if they were sad or happy tears. Sad because I had spent so much time building my life for a future in journalism. But happy because my internal struggle of constantly contemplating why I didn’t feel accomplished had been resolved. Though, my internal struggle led me to the epiphany that I should choose a career where I can utilize my natural-born skills — event planning.
My main concern was telling my network and mentors who helped me achieve everything up until that point. Would they support me in my decision? Would they tell me I was crazy?
At 20 years old, I attended my first journalism-related program, The New York Times Student Journalism Institute in Tucson, Arizona. I worked as a copy editor during the two-week journalism boot camp. I took advantage of every moment in that newsroom. Little did I know, at the end of the two weeks, I was awarded the Armando Montaño Scholarship. It honors Montaño, a journalist who attended the Institute in 2010 but then later died in Mexico City during an internship with AP in 2012 when he was only 22. When I stepped up to give an impromptu speech, I knew I was exactly where I should be.
After the program, I continued down the path of traditional journalism and copy editing. I continued work at The Daily as a senior copy editor, a copy chief, and most recently, the copy manager. Then the internship application season approached last fall. I applied to the Boston Globe for a copy editing internship and took the Dow Jones News Fund copy editing test. The Boston Globe was my first official interview and after 20 minutes on the phone, I felt like I had blown it. It was a no. When I took the copy editing test — mainly because others encouraged me — I hated every minute of it. If the concepts and skills it was testing were what a life in copy editing for a news outlet was going to be, I didn’t want a career in it. So I had to re-evaluate my game plan.
I decided to apply for internships outside of copy editing. I was accepted into the Knight-CUNYJ diversity initiative internship program, an eight-week journalism bootcamp.
Through the program I was placed with an outside internship in the New York City area, which was O, The Oprah Magazine. For the Knight-CUNYJ program, I had to write a story related to politics, which I already had no interest in. I chose to write a story about undocumented immigrants and their political activism. But I dragged my feet. I also pulled my hair. Why? Because I had lost my passion in the writing. I could write the story, but I didn’t enjoy it, and what reader (or editor) wants to read an 800-word story that the writer didn’t have any interest in?
For Oprah, I didn’t do any writing, but knew that if I wanted a career on the editorial side, I would have to start from the bottom and write my way up.
Although both internships were great experiences, I began, again, to think about what I wanted out of a career.
It wasn’t with journalism.
Since I came back from New York, I’ve struggled to admit that the life — and resume — I built isn’t the life I want. My support system within OU, Gaylord and The Daily is mostly made up of people in journalism, and I knew I couldn’t dance around the issue when classes started.
I started with a Gaylord adviser I knew was closer in age and would understand. It still wasn’t easy. I walked into his office, nervous of admitting what I had discovered over the summer. What began as a simple story, turned into slow, broken up statements. And then tears. But when I finished, I felt my shoulders relax, as a wave of relief came over me; my nerves had calmed, too. My adviser was more than accepting and told me that figuring out what I wanted out of life was part of the maturation process. Telling one person put me on the path to accepting that doing what I wanted to do, what would ultimately make me happy, was the best — and only — decision for me.
On to the second mentor: a professor who has supported me since sophomore year. As I sat down in her office, I felt sick to my stomach. How could I tell one of my journalism professors that I didn’t want to do journalism? I still felt afraid and ashamed. I was afraid she would have felt that she had wasted her time on investing in me as a journalism student. I was afraid to disappoint her.
As I was choking back tears, admitting that I no longer wanted to pursue a career in journalism, she said that telling those who you feel have invested in you so far about your career aspirations will only show you who is truly there for you. Some may stay and some may leave, she said, and then you will know who truly has invested in you as a person.
She told me that I was more than the resume I had built. I was a person whom she would only be happy for if I was truly happy in pursuing a career I actually wanted.
I understand, now, that I shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed to talk about what I want. I’ve spent a majority of my life pursuing things that people expect of me than actually pursuing things that I want. It’s not for the recognition. It’s for the support. I figured making professors, mentors, friends and family proud of me was the ultimate goal, at least in my career, to help keep me going. Everyone needs support in life.
And now, I’m a senior with less than nine months before I walk across the stage and get a diploma — the weight of the world — put into my hands, which is only screaming at me (and my peers), “Must find a job! Must find a job!” It’s not something to dread, though. I look forward to finding a job that I’m excited about. I look forward to finding a job I want for myself. And my bachelor’s in journalism will not go unused. The skills from journalism are transferrable to many things in life, and I hope to put them to good use in event planning. I now have the courage to walk across the stage and pursue the life I want, not the life others think I should have.
If I learned anything in my 3.5 years of college thus far, I learned that those who are invested in me as a person will always support me. Ultimately, as my second mentor said, it’s my life, not anyone else’s.
