The Conquistador

Issue date: 5/6/09 Section: Opinion

Bianca Villegas

One day at work, before school started, I was wondering how I was going to get enough money to get all my books for the semester.
Then I saw a guy that looked familiar, so I asked him, "Where have I seen you?" He told me that he had seen me in the Fine Arts building in the morning before Mrs. Waters' class.
That's when I realized that I didn't have enough money for my books, so I asked him if he knew how I could get funding for books.
He then told me he was looking for students to be in journalism classes, and that if I was interested he could get me a scholarship.
I started taking the idea he gave me into consideration because I didn't have enough money for my books. At the same time, I knew I didn't like to write a lot. I didn't know if I could learn all the things the rest of the students knew.
After work, I thought about it a lot more. I mean it was a good deal, I would get my tuition and books paid for, and all I had to do was write for the school paper every other week, so I made up my mind, I was going to take the offer.
The first day back to school I went to talk to Mr. Tipton to see if he were still looking for students to join journalism. He said yes, and that I could go to one of the publication days to see what all went on the paper, and to see if it was something I would enjoy doing.
At first, I was a little nervous because all the classmates were used to the routine and knew how to place the stories, how to make the borders, change the pictures, take notes when following up a story, and where all the stories went. I just thought, "I will have to get on the ball to try to learn everything, even if it was going to be a challenge."
During the semester everything went well; it was not as stressful as I thought it would be. I met a lot of people, and I started to enjoy writing.
One of the people I enjoyed meeting and interviewing was Richard Ford, because he likes to come to school and help others; he is an amazing person.
It wasn't until March, when we went to Hutchinson to an awards ceremony for journalism that I really started coming around to the idea of being a journalist.
I had a lot of fun with all the rest of my classmates. I started to see a different perspective of being a journalist. It doesn't just have to do with all the news that's going around for us to read or watch. News is more about finding information and writing it in a way that it makes the readers want to read it at the moment it happens. Coming back from the trip, I thought it would be something I would enjoy doing, I even considered it as a future goal.
Then a couple days ago when we came back from our trip our class found out that our teacher wasn't going to be here next year. I thought of all the fun things that journalism brought to me; I made good friends, learned how to make a better story and how to take better reporting notes.
All I want to say is thanks Mr. Tipton for letting me join the staff. I got more out of it than I thought I would.

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