Going into my final year at Los Alamitos High School I had no clue where I wanted to go to school or what I wanted to become. A tragedy that struck my neighborhood pointed me in the right direction. My neighbor Kevin Woyjeck was a member of the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew, a fire crew of 20 young men in Arizona who specialized in fighting wildfires. The ever-growing blaze on Yarnell Mountain took his life along with 19 members of his crew. This horrible news brought worldwide attention to our tiny town of Seal Beach, California and was covered by more news outlets than I can count. The day after hearing the horrible news, I drove to our local fire station to see if anyone had started a memorial in his honor. A reporter approached me with a cameraman and microphone in hand to ask me if I knew him. I told her that he was my next door neighbor as I was holding back tears. She asked me politely if she could interview me briefly about his life and anything else that I would like to say. It was a true blessing to say the most wonderful things about Kevin for the 4 p.m. broadcast, and I found another blessing: the knowledge that I wanted to pursue journalism.
After the tearful interview the reporter gave me a hug and spoke with me for ten minutes about how truly sorry she was for this tragedy and that she would do everything in her power to make sure that his story was told properly. That ten minute conversation gave me a sense of direction of what I wanted to do with my future. I wanted to be on camera, interact with people, and most importantly tell stories that deserved to be told in a unique and heartfelt way. Right when I got back from the fire station my friend posted on Instagram that she had been admitted to the Dodge School of Film and Journalism at Chapman University, with an emphasis in Broadcast Journalism. She posted a picture of a media center like room with editing booths, TV screens, an anchor desk, and microphones. Months later, I toured the Dodge School at Chapman and felt right at home. Little did I know that when I was rejected from Chapman in March, it was the biggest blessing in disguise. I chose to go to Loyola Marymount University my freshman year to further my studies in the Communications department. It was interesting to me, but it didn't seem close to what I wanted to pursue. I got involved with the Athletics department where I filmed games and did post game interviews but I knew that there were so many different avenues that I was eager to explore.
In October of my freshman year, I visited the brand new Annenberg School here at USC. I had a smile on my face for three days straight. Picturing myself in that media center with all of the state of the art technology was all I could ever dream of, and it was the motivation I needed to get the grades to transfer. With determination and playing the USC fight song numerous times to remind me of my goal, I was welcomed into the Trojan family the following July, as well as the Annenberg family. My first year as a journalism student was a whirlwind and it made me fall in love with my major more and more each day. From doing live coverage from the media center during the San Bernardino shooting to interviewing individuals that have Down syndrome, I look forward to broadening my horizons, pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and hopefully being able to tell your story one day.
