Personal Narrative

With tears in my eyes, I explained to my dad that this is my sport. 

 

Frustrated that I was having the same conversation again, I tried to put things into a perspective they would understand. I loved basketball, but being completely honest, I was never the greatest player. If I were, I know my parents would have let me continue the sport throughout high school. I needed them to understand that broadcast was my sport, the thing I was good at that wasn’t school.

 

Athletes dedicate their after-school lives to drilling, conditioning, and training for their sport. Journalism was my equivalent. Searching for the behind-the-scenes and the untold stories. Dedicating my time to learning about people’s why.

 

I have had the same conversation with my parents every summer about reserving a spot in my schedule for a journalism class. Each year was a new fight, and each year left harder choices for me to make. 

 

I stumbled upon my love for journalism by accident. In eighth grade, I took the Principles of AV, Tech and Communications class simply as a filler elective. However, I was drawn to the broadcasting unit. When we were shown the high school’s broadcast as an example, I knew I wanted to follow this path a little further and see where it would lead.

 

My dad, however, wasn’t keen on keeping Broadcast. In his mind, I was wasting the slot for a potentially better elective. But I knew this was going to be my “thing.” Everyone has that one elective they put their heart into, the one that becomes a second family. Broadcast was it for me. So when my dad gave me the choice between basketball and broadcast, I chose the latter.

 

By sophomore year, I had been traded to a new team. With a new coach and different teammates, it meant relearning dynamics and setting new standards. Although the sport was still journalism, our limited staff meant I was leading and teaching the freshmen, even though I wasn't an expert at anything myself. I was scriptwriting, sending critiques, assigning roles, all while working to improve my own skills. I learned to adapt to major changes while still creating a flourishing product and supporting others.

 

The night before our first show, I was sitting at my screen staring at the script, struggling with what to write. In the top right corner, I watched as little circles of others’ profiles popped up and disappeared. Knowing that people were actively watching me write the script but weren’t contributing irked me. As the hours I spent creating graphics or writing scripts were overlooked by the rest of the staff, my frustration grew throughout the year. I brought up these concerns to the rest of the class to see if we could reassess roles and hold people accountable for their responsibilities. Despite that, it felt as though I were replaceable and my passion for journalism slowly seemed to be dying out. I started to question why I wanted to keep the class so badly.

 

And then I met Mabry. She was a girl who was diagnosed with autism and SYNGAP-1, causing her to be nonverbal. When we decided to feature her, it meant that we were her voice. 

 

There is one quote from our interview with her mom that I will never forget.

 

“Most parents want their kids to outlive them. We don't. Because we know there’s nobody there to take care of them when we’re gone.”

 

Stories like hers are the ones that people don’t know about, but need to be shared. Her story is what brought me back. It reminded me why I loved broadcast in the first place. After sending the story, her mom texted me about how she was thankful that we shared Mabry’s story. She even reshared it on her social media. I learned that interviews were simply deep conversations. Instead of treating them like an interview, I started to ignore the camera and truly have a conversation.

 

When it came to sitting with my parents and deciding my courses for junior year, I once again fought for broadcast. Voices were raised, cheeks were wet and the tension was apparent. However, this time, I had a reason beyond simply enjoying or being good at it- I wanted to be the voice for those who couldn’t share their stories. I remember the relief I felt as I clicked on Broadcast II and added it to my courses.

 

“I saw you dropped broadcast. WG-TV will not be the same without you,” my broadcast adviser Leigh Ann Wiemann said.

 

I was at my cousin’s house when I received this message, and my heart dropped. I had previously experienced a few minor schedule conflicts in keeping broadcast, but it had never not been in my schedule at all. I had already fought so hard with my parents to keep it and didn’t expect that I would have to struggle with my counselors as well.

 

In a desperate attempt to keep any form of media or journalism in my life, I switched over to Yearbook. 

 

The inherent idea was the same: documenting and reporting about the student body, for the student body. But there was so much that was different, too. I had never trained to take pictures, and I found it much harder than my experience with video. 

 

Not only that, but in broadcast you could easily schedule when to interview or grab footage. Those activities didn’t have to be together. However, in yearbook, that wasn’t the case. 

 

There was an instance where we had forgotten to grab a quote from someone, and realized it as we were approaching our deadlines. Though we had mini deadlines, they were unfortunately not followed closely until we got closer to the hard deadline at the end of the year. In a panic, I frantically emailed, Google chatted, and asked for his phone number to text him, desperately hoping he would respond. It was things like these that made the spring of the school year especially stressful. I learned that staying organized and timely was crucial. Stories don’t wait for you to catch up when you are running behind.

 

At this point, I realized there was a lot to learn from each form of media, so this time, when I was choosing my senior year classes, I requested to be in Newspaper. I had also finally reached a point with my parents where I didn’t have to fight to keep media in. 

 

Of course, there was a minor hiccup with my counselor, and I once again believed I would have to drop media, but by sixth period, I was happy to walk into the newspaper class.

 

I felt like I had come back to my roots in a way. While yearbook taught me a lot and I loved learning about different aspects of design, the newspaper let me dive a little deeper into people’s lives and dig for the stories they haven't told yet. It allowed me to bring aspects of broadcast back, like creating multimedia video packages to go along with an article.

 

I had a teacher stop me in the hallway after she read a story about one of her students. She told me about how beautifully it was written and how I captured that student’s story so well. Moments like these feel like winning that championship and have others appreciate what I put out there.

 

In a few months, I will retire the title of “student journalist” but continue to search for stories in a different way. 

 

The skills that I have attained through these experiences will be the stepping stones to my success in the healthcare field. I have always had a fascination with how the brain works. As I pursue neuroscience and medicine, I will connect with my patients and hear their stories. When I ask a patient how they are feeling, I will remember to hear beyond the symptoms they are telling me, just as I learned to listen beyond the camera. Though I may no longer be able to provide an outlet for them to share their stories with the world, my hope is that the connection I form with each person will allow me to care for them and make them feel seen and heard.

 

My “sport” may have changed once again. The paper may have changed from an article to a doctor’s note, but the intent stays the same: dig for the untold stories and make a difference in the lives of others.