personal
reflection

I let myself delve into this little hobby of mine for a couple more years, furthering

this fantasy until I soon became enthralled with the idea of committing to this

label early on and somehow publishing a novel, evolving into this prodigy, a child

author, before I could age out of the phase when people still appreciate you’re into art.

 

I created a plan for myself for this to happen and considering I was in elementary school, it wasn’t the most detailed thing I’ve ever made but it was realistic if I was willing to stick to writing. It involved me auditioning for communications at Bak Middle School of the Arts, getting accepted for communications at Bak Middle School of the Arts, going to Bak Middle School of the Arts, and many, many, many more general goals like these. I didn’t consider what clubs I’d join, what classes I’d take, and what paths I’d try within communications.

 

What I definitely didn’t consider was that there were other facets of communications that weren’t creative writing and were required. As a fifth grader, I didn’t really get the memo that I should’ve researched what else there was before entering the audition room and especially before making it to the classroom.

 

I was disappointed. I was disappointed that creative writing wasn’t part of the sixth grade wheel, I was disappointed that it was considered an elective of all things—very rude in the eyes of sixth grade me—and I was disappointed that I had a journalism class first period. Everything introduced to me during that class was completely foreign, and I was disgusted by it—no offense, sixth grade me was very rude herself.

 

I hated the seemingly rigid structure of the inverted pyramid and the LQTQ format, the ethics and standards and blatant blacklisting within the industry, the interviews and open-ended questions and awkward silences, everything. Most of all, I hated that I was good at this stuff when I put effort into it. The lead in a profile I wrote for an assignment was praised by the teacher and used as an example in front of the whole class and even though I shyly sank in my chair, scanning my classmates’ faces for any hint of jealousy, and covered my lower face with my sleeve to hide my pride manifesting as a smile, I still thought of journalistic writing similarly to academic: there was little room for creativity.

 

I know now that not only was sixth grade me rude and closed-minded, she was also wrong about journalism. She only took the class for a semester though, so it would be a while until she figured that out.

 

It took branching out into broadcast journalism and graphic design in middle school for me to just realize there is more to communications than creative writing. It took taking journalism and creative writing again in high school, forcing me to reflect on the role each played in my life during the silent back-to-back Google Meets of the pandemic’s notorious online learning, for me to be able to appreciate both. It took turning a recent passion, photography, into a position on The Muse for me to enjoy what journalism had to offer as an individual subject.

 

Writing wasn’t the only thing found in journalism, which I learned through telling a story with a picture, an entirely different medium but one I strived to appreciate and understand without self-limitations, and creativity wasn’t found in only creative writing, which I learned when I managed to write vivid and captivating but unbiased descriptions in photo captions. Both were outlets for me to explore what I was too ambitious and blind to embrace in elementary and middle school.

 

It wasn’t the writing structures or formats that were rigid but the eventually unrealistic plans I made for becoming a young author, no room for my creativity to flourish in other genres or mediums, and the mindset I held that pulled me away from allowing myself to enjoy journalism for its purpose, one that it shared with creative writing: storytelling.

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