The Universities at Shady Grove (USG)

Writing has been something that I have always gravitated towards for a long time. When I was around eight or nine years old, I wanted to become an author and write stories and to this day, I still think about one day publishing a novel or two. 

My journey as a writer has grown over the past few years with opportunities that allowed me to craft this skill. The first time I’d say I took my writing seriously was when I was a sophomore in high school. I signed up to take Introduction to Journalism where I got to learn the basics of journalism writing. 

After a semester of taking the class, I ended up joining the newspaper! I was a staff writer for my sophomore and junior years and for my senior year, I was one of the associate editors. My teacher, Ms. Sara Confino, helped me grow as a writer and always supported me as a student. Being in her class was one of the reasons why I stayed on staff for most of my high school experience. 

Upon graduating high school, I entered what many adults would say “the real world”. “The real world” as always, granted me some tough challenges along the way. One of which was my passion for journalism. I eventually started to lose my interest in journalism due to the challenges I could face within the field. 

However, I should understand that getting into my career field of writing is not going to be an easy walk in the park no matter what path I will take. I mentioned in my first blog post that I changed my major from international studies to communication. In hindsight, I realized that studying communication was something that I could have done from the beginning of my college journey. 

Now that I am a student at USG, I have been granted opportunities to help me grow as a writer outside of what I wanted to do originally with my career plans. I started out by becoming a writer here at Around the Grove to share my experience being a student on campus. By sharing my experiences, I wanted students and staff to take away what I’ve learned during my time at USG. 

In addition to the blog, I took a screenwriting class! The class is an elective taught by Dr. Adam Nixon and we primarily learned how to write screenplays for films. Screenwriting was another avenue that I had considered and this class allowed me to not only grow as a writer but as a communicator. 

Even though writing is a life-long career path I’m on, writing has given me a sense of identity and ease in what I want to do. Even in my downtime, I like to write whether that’s journaling about my day or even learning poetry. After a few years of figuring out myself, I realized that being a communication major has helped me expand my career journey and who I am.