The Fourth Estate and Its Surrogate Son

I got into the University of Northern Colorado's journalism and mass communications program well after I had already been writing for newspapers.

I started working at the student newspaper The Mirror in spring 2006 as a way to make some quick money (ha!) and possibly get paid to see movies as a friend had recommended the job to me as a way to do both. I quickly found out that I was a born journalist and took every Arts & Entertainment story that came my way. That summer, I also wrote film reviews for my hometown paper, the Craig Daily Press. I kept at it at The Mirror through spring 2008, when I officially became a journalism major. The following summer, I interned at the Press, doing virtually every type of work (with a few movie reviews snuck in, of course). Then that fall, I started taking the major JMC classes and started to fill in the gaps of what I had learned under fire in the field. Additionally, I became the A&E section editor at The Mirror.

I feel like I stumbled across a treaure chest in how my college career has gone. I still love my first major of theater studies, but journalism is where I belong and that serendipitious referral by my friend Drew Smartt has turned into something special. Not only have I managed to get nearly 200 stories on The Mirror's Web site (count 'em!), but I have really found direction thanks to the journalism program here. Before my time spent in JMC classes, I had no aim in where I wanted my life to go. This is still something I'm battling, but nonetheless, I feel more than prepared to face the professional world because of my schooling.