Ever since the beginning of my freshman year at Marywood in the fall of 2008, I always had an interest in becoming involved with The Wood Word. All around campus, I would see flyers hanging up advertising the next meeting, where news articles were waiting to be written, and the photographs that would accompany them were waiting to be taken.
Photography has always been a passion of mine and I enjoy writing, so I thought joining The Wood Word would be a perfect extracurricular activity for me.
As much as I was interested in getting involved with paper, for whatever reason, I managed not to attend a meeting. Something always seemed to come up, whether there was a paper that needed to be written or an exam that needed to be studied for. I always thought to myself, ‘There’s always the next meeting.’
It wasn’t until the fall semester of my junior year that I finally made it to a meeting and it took my professor and current Wood Word adviser, Dr. Lindsey Wotanis, to make it happen. At the end of one particular COMM 115: News Writing class in which I was enrolled, Dr. Wotanis insisted, as part of the class, that we all attend a Wood Word meeting to experience what working for a newspaper was like first-hand.
Even though I was interested in seeing what the paper was all about, walking over to that meeting after night class was the last thing I wanted to do. Looking back, I am so glad I attended that meeting. If we hadn’t gone as a class, I more than likely would not have gone on my own.
After that first meeting, I made it a point to go to all of them. I began taking the majority of the photographs for the newspaper and soon found myself as the photography editor. My love and passion for photography only made the “work” I did for The Wood Word all the more enjoyable.
Photojournalism is my ideal career choice and having the opportunity to experience and practice it at The Wood Word has been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had at Marywood.
Working for The Wood Word never really felt like work. I’ve been doing what I love to do, gaining tremendous experience and, best of all, I got to experience it with an amazing, fun group of people that have become great friends. Thank you all for everything. I can only hope that my first “real” job will be anything close to what I’ve done and experienced at The Wood Word.