Starting in my junior year of high school I wanted to be a sports journalist/ reporter. I loved sports and I loved to talk about sports to the point where it became something everyone knew about me in high school. I also loved writing. Writing was one of the only things growing up that came naturally to me, and I was very good at it. I received a perfect score on the 4thgrade writing test, always got A’s in English classes, and won a national award in middle school for writing and an international Ayn Rand essay competition in high school, as well as scoring a 10 out of 12 on the ACT writing portion. Most of all I enjoyed writing. I had a passion for it, it made me happy. So why not combine those two things I love and have a career out of it? Those were my thoughts exactly.
The thing was I also wanted to be extremely successful, I wanted to work for The New York Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated. I wanted to be Peter King, Mike Greenberg, Mike Francesca. A lot of my family were wary of this goal and said stuff like are you sure you want to do that? Or is there a future in that? I understand my parents and siblings wanted me to be successful and happy. Families worry and I understand that now, but then I just wanted to prove to everyone that it wasn’t some pipe dream, and that if I worked hard it would be attainable. The more I looked into it though, the more I realized how little people read the newspaper outside of my family. I started to worry that I would be fighting an uphill battle. So then in the middle of my junior year I looked at sociology, psychology, and criminology because I liked to learn about how people think and why they do what they do. Criminology is not like the TV shows or movies, and characters like Clarice from The Silence of the Lambs is a glorified version of what really happens. Given that and the fact I would never get to write if I pursued Criminology, my focus went back to sports reporting my senior year of high school.
My aunt was a vice president at Knight-Ridder and held many high-ranking positions, including president and publishing editor, at newspapers in Washington, DC, Chicago, South Carolina (Myrtle Beach, and Columbia), San Diego, and Miami. Her husband was also a former investigative journalist in Chicago, and one of her very close friends was a sports reporter in Washington, and Chicago. So, my aunt supported my aspirations of being a journalist. Her very close friend wrote me a letter on my birthday about his experience as a journalist and he also said in that letter something along the lines of “if you enjoy sports but don’t think you would be able to handle sports as your life and see past your enjoyment then you may want to be an insurance salesman.” That made me think a lot.
When I got into UNC and found out they had one of the best journalism programs in the country, I told myself I would have an advantage over everyone else from other schools. I enrolled in MEJO 101, an introduction to journalism, public relations, advertising, and new media. I also enrolled in History of Sports in America, and I applied to be on the sports desk of The Daily Tar Heel. I was on my quest to be a sports reporter.
One problem was that my high school did not have a newspaper so I had no experience. I didn’t get on the sports desk, I got my second choice the copy desk. Throughout that time something else was happening. I was thinking about my future a lot and I was uncertain a lot.
I sometimes couldn’t sleep because I didn’t know if I would make enough money to support myself, if I would have any room to grow, or if I would have a job at all? Would my profession still be around in 10 years? Most importantly did I even want to do it anymore?
Now to people who are pursuing sports journalism or even journalism I’m not saying you’ll be jobless and that there’s no hope for you. If it’s your passion then don’t let anything I or anyone else says stop you. I just didn’t have a passion for it anymore. I realized that I didn’t want to be a reporter, I wanted to be a sports reporter and nothing else. The days of beat reporters were going away, and what I would end up doing probably wouldn’t resemble the world I imagined as a career.
The other thing that made an impression on me was taking History of Sports and reading a book in that class called Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto (which to this day is one of the best books I have ever read and I’ll save that for another post). To keep it short the book talks about how sports is something we enjoy, but it is very unethical, money hungry, and puts people’s lives in danger for our entertainment. Sports is something that shouldn’t be placed higher than anything else, for most people it is an escape. To chase athletes around all day long to get a quote and for them to give you the silent treatment or yell at you, when all they are is better at sports than you, is something I couldn’t get over. Sports is something I love to watch, but as my aunt’s friend asked me could I make a career out of it? The answer is no. I wanted sports to be something I enjoyed, something that interested me and that I never got tired of. I knew if I did sports journalism, sports would be my life and I wanted more out of my life than sports.
So realizing that, for a good two weeks, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
First I thought about being a lawyer and then I remembered that entails so much reading and that I didn’t even want to be a lawyer at all, it just wasn’t my thing. So that lasted for a day (I think everyone at some point has had thoughts about being a lawyer). Then I looked at maybe business because that sounded cool and there was a lot of opportunities. I looked at the requirements. I could take BUSI 101, I guess I could do ECON 101, I took econ in high school and hated it, I had already taken STOR 155 (statistics), and then I saw that I have to take calculus and I said, “I’m out.” Math is cool and all, I am okay at math, and I enjoyed statistics but I’ve heard terrible stories about calc at UNC and I wasn’t putting myself through that. Again, I realized I want to write and be creative but I didn’t know what profession that was possible in.
Later that week (or the next week) in MEJO 101 we had guest lecturers in class go over what public relations is, what does public relations does. Since I was in high school people close to me told me to look into PR since and I always said no and that I wanted to be a sports reporter. This was my first time ever actually listening to what PR actually was. The four guest faculty lecturers (Richard Clancy, Joseph Cabosky, Valerie Fields, and Adam Saffer) talked about how PR can’t really be defined and that in order to do PR you have to like to write, you have to like people, you have to like talking to people, and that every day brings something new, but that it is very rewarding. It dawned on me then that I should look into PR as a career. So when I got back to my dorm, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about PR and I thought I had an okay grasp of what PR professionals do (turns out they do a lot more than I thought.) When spring class registration came around I made it a goal to get into MEJO 137: Principles of Advertising and Public Relations… and I didn’t… because Connect Carolina is the worst (somethings never change).
I eventually took 137 and I loved it. I also loved PR Writing, and all the other PR related classes I’ve taken (MEJO 379, 475, 477, 531). With this decision I am in three MJ-School clubs, I’ve had two internships and I look forward to the future. I think a lot of times if you weigh all the options and keep an open mind then things, such as a career choice, might just appear right in front of you one day.