My interest in news began in 2012, a year after the Syrian war had began. Reading about the thousands of families suffering and fighting to survive made me look at myself in the mirror. I had everything. I had a family, I had safety, I had shelter and food. I had no excuse to not give it my all.  One day, while walking to one of my classes, I passed big, white words printed on a broken wall, words that cha<a href=”http://fiveseventy.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/TELE5570.jpg”><img class=”alignleft size-medium wp-image-967″ src=”http://fiveseventy.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/TELE5570-300×300.jpg” alt=”TELE5570″ width=”300″ height=”300″ /></a>nged my life forever: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

The Kennesaw State paper, <em>The Sentinel</em> was where my journalism career began, but to my disillusion, they gave me stories no one else wanted to cover, and after writing one too many I decided to change my major to business. Walking to the business school with papers in my hand made me stop and think, I decided to give journalism one more chance.

My life had turned upside down, and in order to change it right side up I needed an Internship badly, an internship at a big news corporation. A corporation like CNN. To my surprise all the applications were for juniors and seniors only, but that wasn’t going to stop me. After many phone calls, and lengthy applications I got the call of a lifetime. They had picked me to intern at the CNN Headquarters.

My ambition only grew after that. As my second year of university began, I came back to work for the Kennesaw State paper again. News of the president of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, coming to Kennesaw, circulated the school like wildfire. I asked the editor of the newspaper if I could attend and report on his stay, he refused. He told me that as a sophomore I could not cover it, a story of this magnitude had to be covered by juniors or seniors. I just nodded and left. The day when the president was scheduled to speak I waited for almost two hours until a secret agent came up to me and asked if I was with the press, which I showed my badge and nodded “yes”. He escorted me inside where I saw my editor and gave him a shy grin. His face of disbelief was priceless as he gave me a thumbs up. Not only did I get to meet and ask the president a question at the press conference, but my story made the cover of <em>The Sentinel</em>.

As a reporter, learning about other cultures and people is crucial, so this past year I studied abroad in the Russian Federation. A country that I never thought I would go to.

So from now on I have a new phrase to live by, “Don’t tell people your dreams, show them.”

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