I remember the day my dad told me to drop out of college.<\/p>\n
No, he wasn\u2019t crazy.\u00a0 He was actually encouraging me to pursue what I loved more than anything else\u2014writing.\u00a0 He told me I didn\u2019t need to go to school if I wanted to write for a living.\u00a0 I had to just do it and go.\u00a0 So, I took his advice.<\/p>\n
Well, the first half anyway.\u00a0 I dropped out of Arkansas State University Mountain Home in 2004, right before I got married and moved to Ohio.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go to college for four years, but more importantly, I didn\u2019t write.\u00a0 In fact, I didn\u2019t do much of anything.<\/p>\n
In early 2007, I got pregnant and lost my job (a sad coincidence).\u00a0 Three months and one temporary job later, my husband and I decided I needed to go back to school.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t enroll in Sinclair Community College until Fall 2008.\u00a0 I took a prerequisite and a couple electives, but one class made a bigger difference than all the others: Journalism 101.<\/p>\n
When I started studying journalism I knew I had found what I loved.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t fall in love with keeping democracy free, nor did I feel ecstatic about the freedom of information, at least not at first.\u00a0 More than anything, I loved that I was writing again.<\/p>\n
I was hired by the Clarion<\/em> that fall, but writing was only the beginning.<\/p>\n I\u2019m learning that in journalism there is so much more I can do than write a story.\u00a0 I can also record a story, photograph a story, animate a story or simply speak a story.\u00a0 I can print a story, or I can publish a story online.\u00a0 My love for writing grew into a love for storytelling in every way, shape and form possible.\u00a0 All of these possibilities keep journalism fresh and new to me, just like a love affair should be.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t say this to reflect on myself.\u00a0 Instead, I want to encourage you to find what you\u2019re passionate about.\u00a0 Whatever you do, love it.\u00a0 Embrace it.\u00a0 Chase after it with everything you\u2019ve got.\u00a0 It\u2019s when we chase what we love that we make the most out of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember the day my dad told me to drop out of college. No, he wasn\u2019t crazy.\u00a0 He was actually encouraging me to pursue what I loved more than anything else\u2014writing.\u00a0 He told me I didn\u2019t need to go to school if I wanted to write for a living.\u00a0 I had to just do it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[446,565,195],"class_list":["post-5278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-journalism","tag-passion","tag-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1n8","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5285,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions\/5285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}