As someone who changed her major five times while in community college, I never really knew what I wanted to do for a career after school.

I'm very indecisive and love learning so many different things, which made it hard to settle down on just one area I enjoyed enough to study it further at a four-year school.

During my last year at community college, I visited a friend in Germany for two weeks. While there, I kept a log of every single day I was traveling. I've never done that before but thought it would be a fun way to document the trip. One day, while writing down everything I could remember from the day, while looking at the eight pages already written, I had this epiphany-like moment where I said to myself, "Oh, wow, I really like to write." I immediately googled "jobs that require a lot of writing," and the first career that stood out to me was "journalist."

When I got home from my trip, I applied for the University of Mississippi's School of Journalism and was accepted shortly after. I had no intentions of ever working in an actual newsroom. I mostly wanted to learn more about that style of writing and get a degree in the process.

Fast forward two years later to May 2024; I was handed my diploma and headed back to the Gulf Coast. Before officially heading back, I had looked around the area to see if I could find any media or marketing jobs, but nothing sounded like the right fit for me. Two close friends had shared a link with me for an opportunity to work as a reporting intern for the summer at Gulf Coast Media. I decided to apply and was accepted shortly after.

After working with this team over the summer, I discovered being a reporter is something I truly enjoy doing and decided to join officially as a part-time reporter after being offered. I tend to cover events in the area and environmental stories, especially on the coast. One of my favorite parts of the job is just how much I'm learning in the process, from journalistic techniques to what's happening in Baldwin County. I love how it's something different every week. Different people to interview, different places to go and different things to learn. One of the best things about being in this industry is I am not limited to just one thing to learn. This has been one of the best places to work for an indecisive, lover of learning like me.

My mom always likes to bring up the story of when I was about 12 years old and I wrote a bi-weekly "paper" for my family that I called "The Mayo Times." I would write about things like my sister's new bike, lunch will be mac and cheese or where my family and I had gone in the past week or so. Even though I had never actually planned to work for a newspaper, it seems like I've always liked the idea of writing for one.