How One Forensic Science Major Became A Writer: From Righting Society to Writing for the Paper

Breaking into the journalism field was never in my five-year-plan, certainly not five years ago. Writing? Me? I think you may have been looking for the girl in Honors English who was sitting next to me. She gets the A's and can interpret Camus better than the teacher while my attention was usually elsewhere.

You see, I was just a girl with an overly-organized mind that one day received a memo that some life goals were about to change.

Beginning in high school, I had a pretty strong pull toward our Criminal Justice system. I loved the idea of righting the wrongs and getting justice for all those who deserved it. I felt our society was falling apart and seemed to think that I, a naïve 13-year-old, could jump into the corrections field and make magic happen. During my sophomore year I had one teacher, a Mr. Wagner, who intensified my drive to make the world a better place in which to be. He made me feel that the more historical cases I memorized and the more role playing as a judge would prepare me to channel the basic school work into a career.

I went through the rest of high school focused on Criminal Justice, applied for colleges, and dreamed of working with the NYPD crime lab to bring in the bad guys. Then, the one day I actually decided to eat lunch instead of mulling over physics homework in the library, a friend approached me about being an editor for our school’s newspaper, The Green Raider.

Pause.

Refer to first paragraph.

That was part of the conversation I had with Steve, who I thought wanted to torture me because of my lack of grammar skills. I laughed and pushed the suggestion away but after a week of him begging me just to go to the meeting, I caved went to see what this Green Raider was all about.

From the time I passed into the room were the headquarters was housed I knew something had changed in me. This wasn’t a newspaper room. There was just one patient man, our advisor named Mr. Thomas, 10 driven students, and me – a girl who felt she just found home.

I signed on to be the News Editor which meant I had to report on what was going on around school and to make sure each club received equal coverage. I never worked so hard in my life. The nights before the issues were due I would be in the newspaper room until 11PM with the adviser putting on the finish touches because our Editor-in-Chief decided to go missing. I never even knew my high school existed after 5PM.

I learned self restraint, self motivation, how to manage other students, but most of all I learned that I loved journalism. I enjoyed making sure each hairline was straight and each font was correct throughout the paper, but most of all I loved seeing the issue when it came to print. There in print was all of The Green Raiders' staff’s hard work and it always looked amazing.

Now, two years later, I am the Production Manager for my University’s newspaper, The Pace Press. I oversee a staff of approximately 10 driven and talent people and am just as proud to see our hard work in print each week.

Thanks to a push from Steve, an acceptance from Mr. Thomas and a change of heart from me, I fell in love with journalism.

Oh, here is a fun fact for you: my major is Forensic Science. Now I can change the world and write about it too.

DJ Hopson, Contributing Writer, NYC
Photo from here