Just 10 hours after I got back to Los Angeles after five months abroad, I had the honor of giving the key note speech to a room full of Los Angeles-area high school students at Cal State Northridge’s high school journalism event, which they had organized with the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
I spoke about my experiences after graduating from CSUN in 2007, about falling into an editing job I felt I was forced to take given the crumbling media environment, even though it was far from the career goals I had set for myself, about how I began to devote every hour I could outside of the 40 hour work week to freelancing, eventually starting my own online magazine, and finally, leaving to pursue the crazy, beautiful and nerve wracking world of freelance journalism, full-time. I spoke of making the decision to spend my summer in Armenia, traveling up and down the country on Soviet-era vans, sitting on wooden chairs (that would be while I was inside the van), having children throw up on me on more than one occasion, filing stories, meeting people and having the time of my life.
I spoke about being intrepid, letting go of fear, not thinking too much and going after whatever it is truly makes the blood pump through your veins, even when you’re sleeping. In my case, that’s journalism.
It was encouraging seeing so many young people interested in media, especially since sometimes there’s so much to be depressed about when it comes to this ever-changing industry, which brought me to my ending point – there has never been a more amazing time to be a journalist, a time when you can carve your own path, be your own entrepreneur in ways that the journalists of 20 or maybe even 10 years ago could never dream of. We are truly in an environment now, however scary it may seem, that fosters journalism and pushes its limits more than ever before, and embracing it is really the only thing left to do.
Here’s a short write up from University High School’s newspaper of the day’s events.