Saturday, August 8, 2009

Just finished reading the last Harry Potter book. Now, I suppose, I'll need to buy another one. Actually, I should probably just buy my textbooks and start reading those. It has been an interesting day. It was one of those days when you can feel things shifting around and evolving -- or, feel yourself changing. I walked from my desk, across the newsroom when I, for some reason, thought of what I always said I wanted to be. Where I wanted to be. I might not have forseen being in South Dakota, but, I always said that I wanted to be at an internship. An internship, I thought, would give me everything I needed to escape. As I walked across the news room, I couldn't help but feeling like "It's really happening."
Those moments, when you can acknowledge that you are in them, are extremely rare. It seems that you only recognize these moments years after they have passed. I haven't been able to come up with a good reason for doing journalism yet. At least not until today. I was describing everything I had to do to my mom, and she said, "I guess journalism is more than just writing stuff down. There's a lot more to it, I guess."
I replied to a text message that asked "What is the highlight of the internship." It took me a day to respond, to come up with a good enough highlight, or, to discover the highlight. I responded that it was getting to meet, talk to and learn so much about other people. People that I would have never met otherwise. Stories I could have never heard if I would not have been given this internship.
Every job, or task, is going to have flaws, I think. I have spent most of my time here waiting for my internship to start. Now that next week will be my last in South Dakota, I think that my whole life has been leading up to this point. I am no one special in this unfimilar state. I am not the best journalist or even intern to sit in that newsroom. But I try really hard to be. I try really hard and even though that sounds really trite, it's the best I could conjure up.
Sometimes, if not always, people see things in me that I do not see. They see potential and perserverance and talent. These things, I have yet to encounter in myself, but they must be there.
This, I am starting to realize, is not going to be the hardest task in my life and it really is, just the beginning. I am truly excited to see where I end up, what I end up doing and who I end up meeting, because I have no idea. I can make plans to do more internships and plans to attend certain colleges, but I cannot plan the rest. I never planned to get accepted into AIJI and I certainly never planned to do an internship in South Dakota. I can't wait to see what fate is going to indulge in next.

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