Always Ally

Student journalist examines motivations

I’m sitting at the computer about to pull out every last strand of hair out of my head. It’s my first time doing an entire layout; I have no idea what I’m doing. Slowly but surely I’m going insane because of all the pressure I’m putting on myself. Then the ultimate question pops into my head: why am I still doing journalism when it can be the most stressful thing ever?
Finding the answer to this question takes a lot of thought. I have to start from the beginning by asking why I joined journalism in the first place. That reason was because I loved to write. I wrote poetry as a kid and even attempted a book, but that failed miserably. Once I hit high school I decided to do something different. My mom thought I would enjoy journalism so I signed up for the intro class. After journalism one, I knew I had to try newspaper because of the giddy feeling inside my stomach when my article first showed up in the paper.
Sophomore year was my first on staff. The people in my class made it so much more exciting than I could ever imagine. That year I absolutely loved class. Junior year was a little different. With our advisor gone for three months and all of the eccentric reporters having graduated, the fun in journalism began to slip away. This is when I had to decide whether or not to do it next year.
No one knew about the fight I had inside my head. I wasn’t really sure whether or not it would be worth the massive amounts of stress for my final year of high school. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do, but I finally came to a conclusion; I have to do it again next year.
I realized that I thrive on interviewing students throughout the school. I love the feeling in the gut of my stomach when I’m nervous to go interview a person whom I have never met or seen in my entire life.
I get really excited when the delivery guy wheels in the huge stacks of newspapers. I smell the freshness of the ink on the papers and see the colors of the front-page pop out and I get shivers up my spine.
The aspect I love the most about newspaper is writing my columns. Most people don’t believe what I write is what I think. That’s not true. I don’t get to voice my actual opinion all that much, and to be able to do that with out someone interrupting me is truly exhilarating. Without being able to voice my opinion this way I would explode.
So it’s safe to say that without journalism, I would burst into millions of pieces.