10/20/21 - Going Down the Rabbit Hole

I am not sure how to describe the four years in college nor my relationship with writing during that time. The only thing that comes to mind is such a cliché but apropos and that was I had a love-hate relationship with it.

My four years at Penn State were a blur. I felt like Alice in Wonderland in many respects having new experiences and meeting tons of people. I was exposed to a lot I didn’t necessarily agree with but didn’t have the backbone to make a stand, so I went along to get along. The spunk I showed while searching for colleges took a back seat to that familiar feeling of wanting to fit in.  

I also got caught up in the whirlwind that was my financial situation at the time. As the poor kid, I worked one and sometimes two jobs a semester to make ends meet, and that took a toll on my focus and energy. I did not enjoy my classes as I had hoped because I was so damn exhausted, and my GPA was not all that great, which demoralized me. The writing muse – at least the creative one – took a long vacation. The only writing I did was for classes, and it became drudgery. At one point, I nearly gave up on writing altogether after a sadistic English professor who fashioned himself as the next Ernest Hemingway made it abundantly clear that nobody in his class would be getting out of there with anything more than a C. Talk about cutting me off at the knees – and I’m short enough!

When the muse did make an appearance, it was short lived. During my freshman year, I wrote for the prestigious school paper The Daily Collegian. Though I was constrained by the parameters of print journalism, I managed to insert a few bits of artistic flair here and there in my articles about the mundane happenings around campus and in the adjacent town. As the year progressed however, I decided that print journalism was just not as exciting as broadcasting, so I quit the paper.  

I liked the challenge of using images and as few words as possible to communicate a message. I also liked being on camera. Barbara Walters and Connie Chung were role models at the time. I was so fascinated with going on the air that I pushed hard to compete for a coveted internship with an up-and-coming network called CNN. I won and spent half of my senior year living in Washington, D.C. to work at the network’s satellite office. I worked as a production assistant for the financial show “Moneyline” and got to meet the top political and money gurus of the day, among them Jesse Jackson, Senators Newt Gingrich and Charles Schumer, and future Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. I also brushed elbows with the element of celebrity by meeting actor Ted Danson.

My four months in D.C. expanded my horizons and I briefly entertained moving to New York after CNN offered me a job there. However, I knew what I wanted and it wasn’t a life in the big city. I couldn’t imagine sharing a flat with 10 other people just to make ends meet. Also factoring into my decision was protection of my sensitive heart. I got to see up close and personal how cutthroat the television news biz was and I knew I didn’t have what it’d take to move ahead. I cared too much, I guess.  

So after graduation and a brief stint back home, I moved west to Texas with my fiancé to start the next chapter of my life story. It was time to put that journalism degree to work.  

In the next blog, I’ll talk about my relationship with writing in the post-college years. Write & Rise, my friends.