Why I Want to be a Journalist

    The history of me wanting to be a journalist is a short but simple one that I only fully knew some years ago. Growing up, funny enough, I was not interested in sports in the slightest my father would always watch football, baseball, and basketball in the house 24/7, it felt like, but personally, I did not care for sports in the slightest. All of this changed when in middle school, my father took me to my first basketball game, a Washington Wizards game. At the time, I still did not understand how the game of basketball was played, but I fell in love with the atmosphere; the constant cheering, booing, and sway of emotion were communicated through every fan, and that is something I thought was very cool.

    While sports was my passion at this time, I still had yet to think of sports journalism. So over the years, my dad and I progressively went to more and more Wizards games; we even went to some Redskins games at times, a professional football team now called the Commanders.  What caught my eye was a sports debate show called First Take. On this show, the two hosts, at that time they were Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, would debate about the previous night of games and what they thought the implication of a win or a loss was. I became very interested in these sports debate shows. I would watch them all the time, and even as I watched the games, I could imagine the commentary about the game the next day. Even today, I watch shows like First Take, Undisputed, and Get Up. 

    My first taste of hands-on journalism would be in high school. At my high school, I helped work at my school newspapers from my sophomore all the way up to my senior year, while my junior year was a little work since COVID shut a lot of the stuff down. While working at my high school newspaper, I mostly did the sports section covering the games and doing a post-game report. The paper was small, so I did a lot of work but still had some help in this area. I had a fun three years helping make my school newspaper; this experience propelled me into the journalist scene.

    While my future is still uncertain to me in what areas of sports journalism I want, I know I want it to be somewhere in the sports world. Maybe in the next ten years, I will not even be a journalist scene, but as of right now, I am excited about what the future holds and who I might become.