I know what you're going to think from reading the headline, that I just wasn't working hard enough or had no clue what I was doing when I walked in. That just isn't the case.

When I applied to UNC, I had one goal in mind: I wanted to be an NHL beat reporter.

I know that it's a huge goal, but I wanted to fuse my love of the NHL with print writing, something that I had focused on in high school. At that time, I wanted to be like the Washington Post reporters who worked on the Washington Capitals beat. They were my heroes, since they always had an interesting take on why we had lost, how we had won, what winning another President's Trophy meant for our playoff run, and the personal lives of the team and coaches. Plus, they spent all of hockey season reporting across the United States and Canada before returning to Washington D.C. for the playoffs. Who wouldn't want to travel across North America for work? I thought that I wanted to do the same thing with my life and set out to try.

When I was accepted to UNC, I also was accepted to the School of Media and Journalism as an assured admission student. This meant that I would not have to apply to the School of Media and Journalism when I was a sophomore as long as my GPA was above a 3.1 and had the ability to enroll in some core classes earlier. Walking in, my major became Media and Journalism and I would have the ability to declare my desired track at an academic advising meeting. I thought that I would declare myself on the journalism track, but wanted to wait until the end of my first semester.

During my first semester at UNC, I took two of the basic core classes that the School of Media and Journalism offered: Writing and Reporting and Intro to Digital Storytelling. Alongside those two, I also took MEJO 101, The Media Revolution: From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg. I spent hours writing practice articles and press releases in writing and reporting and explored Premiere Pro and HTML coding in digital media. But within Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, I learned more about what I could do with my Media and Journalism major before I officially declared my track.

Gutenberg to Zuckerberg was an evening class that brought in guest speakers every week and tried to show off the many facets of journalism that you could pursue within UNC's School of Media and Journalism. It was eye opening, especially because I had no idea that there was more to journalism than broadcast, print, and digital reporting. There, I listened to professionals who were media strategists for both sides of the 2016 election, public relations practitioners who were immersing students in real world campaigns with partnerships in classrooms, and broadcasters who knew that broadcasting was their first love. Together, we explored how journalism had changed and what exactly constituted as media.

In Carroll 111, I realized that I no longer wanted to be a beat reporter.

Instead, I realized that I was meant for the Public Relations side of media, where I would create campaigns and work with clients to express their public needs. During my fall semester, I began to explore how I could make this into a job that still worked with sports, like my original dream. After having told everyone that I knew that I wanted to be an NHL beat reporter, I had no idea how I could translate that into public relations.

At that point, I was researching second majors online and looking at sports related classes before eventually learning that some professional teams had their own public relations teams.

From there on, that was what I wanted — and still want — to do.

Over a semester after I've changed my major from Media and Journalism to the Public Relations and Advertising track, I've added a Sports Administration major to supplement in sports marketing and management to my college education. Next semester, I'll learn more about sports marketing, writing for public relations, and media ethics as I explore my double major.

I have six more semesters until graduation and there's plenty of time for things to change, but I know that one day I'll be working in public relations for a sports franchise.