Why I Became a Communications Major
I was never one of those kids who didn’t know what they wanted to do with their life. I always had a plan. I had a plan to the point that my teachers would give me confused looks when I was able to tell them what college I wanted to attend and what I wanted to do before I graduated elementary school. A part of this was because I was the daughter of an engineer and a teacher. I valued education, and I thought having a job was the coolest thing an adult could do. But until I was a junior in high school, I never wanted to be a Communications Major. I wanted to be a teacher, a CSI, a librarian, or a writer. However, now that I am a Laughlin resident and can look back, I realize that my childhood interests set me up for this. Even if I didn’t know it, I was always going to be a comm major.
Just like any early 2000’s kid, I loved Scooby-Doo and the Ninja Turtles. My favorite characters, respectively, were Velma Dinkley and April O’Neil. I loved how they could stop bad guys by just reading and asking questions and telling people what they had learned. I idolized their intelligence. I remember playing reporter with my cousins and walking around my house with broken 3D glasses pretending I was Velma solving mysteries.
When I got older, my fascination with investigation and sharing knowledge grew when I started reading the Nancy Drew books series. I adored those books. Nancy could solve the most puzzling mysteries, all while staying poised and having perfect hair. For a solid year, I read exclusively Nancy Drew books. I thought for a while that I could be detective like Nancy. However, I had and still have the weakest stomach known to man and would probably vomit at any crime scene I visited.
During my Nancy Drew obsession, I started reading another book series featuring a brave mouse named Geronimo Stilton. Geronimo was cool, but I thought his sister in the books was fascinating. This little mouse in a children’s book was an investigative reporter. Her name was Thea Stilton, and she rode a motorcycle from interviews to crime scenes to her office at a big city newspaper. When I got a little older and Thea had her own series, I would read those books in one sitting. I loved how she and her university students could go anywhere they wanted, solve problems, report their findings, and change lives.
Throughout my childhood, there were many other things I did and obsessed over that pushed me into majoring in communications. My father and grandfather worked in radio, so for three years, I had my own radio show. I told jokes, queued up music, reported the weather, and lined up news and ads for our listeners. It was addictive, and I spent many summers at the station, working and talking on air.
There were smaller incidents that shaped me for communications, too. In fifth grade, I dressed up as a TV reporter and recorded myself delivering a class project like it was breaking news. My favorite childhood doll was an American Girl Doll named Kit Kitteridge, who was a kid reporter during the Great Depression. My first job was working as a media assistant in my high school’s library. I helped students with research, their computers, and finding books; and I felt like Barbara Gordon working on a case before fighting crime as Batgirl.
All the while, I continued to love writing and asking questions. I wanted to connect with people. I wanted to figure out what people thought and why they did the things they did. When I met a Berry College Alumnus at my high school, we immediately clicked, as attending Berry has been my goal since I was in the third grade. I told her that I did not want to be a teacher like my mother, and I was too squeamish for anything involving medicine or crime. I wanted to write, and I wanted to ask questions and I wanted to be with people. She introduced me to communications, and now I’m here.
As I write this, I know that I’m blessed to be able to look back and know that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. No matter what job or career path I have as an adult, I know that I’m doing what little me would have loved. I get paid to sit students down and ask them questions and write about what they tell me. It’s a curious girl’s dream! I’m becoming the characters I idolized, and I’m happy about that. It’s good to do what you love, especially when you look back and realize that you’ve always loved it.
Attributions
Photos by krakenimages and Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash