My freshman year of college I had no clue what I wanted to major in and I felt like I was far behind everybody else since it seemed everybody already had declared major (obviously not the case).

Since then I declared and noticed myself become a better writer. People have always come to me to edit their papers and I never knew why. Why me of all people? I guess I never really appreciated my writing/editing talent that I apparently have since people come to me.

Being a journalism major and an English minor is an interesting mix because they are polar opposites. People I've talked to actually thought writing for both would be similar and that is certainly not the case.

Writing for journalism requires the writer to follow AP format which is a learning curve on its own. AP style features different spellings of words, different ways to hyphenate, so on and so forth. It is a lot to memorize which is why I frequently use the AP Stylebook because I don't have the best memory.

Writing for English is meant to be creative while writing for journalism, while occasionally creative, normally has to be written at an eighth-grade reading level so it can reach a wider audience. I applaud the journalism field for following this because it promotes inclusivity.

Writing for both can be stressful at times because sometimes I'll want to be creative while doing journalistic activities but can't because of that particular story and sometimes writing for English I'll think I can't be creative because I'll still have journalism in my head. Moral of the story, I do a lot of writing.

The limits that journalism puts on my writing has actually helped me because before I declared my major I wouldn't know how much to write, what to include, if something was important or not but over time I have learned and I'm still learning. I'll never stop learning.

People who decide to become journalists, just know that it'll be a long road and there is always something to learn but it's worth it.