Brad Allen
Student Journalist
WHITEWATER, WI
I remember becoming interested in journalism at the age of 17, in March 2013. I was sitting in a photography class, zoning out during the lecture on aperture sizes while paging through a National Geographic magazine.
The photos told stories: Earthquakes in Haiti. Famine in the Middle East. The famous “Afghan Girl.” Government corruption in China. The dangers facing American safari tourists in Tanzania. All pleasant stuff.
I read the articles next to each photo to learn more, and I thought about the men and women who went out, collected the information and wrote those stories that had deep meaning about the world around us. I had a then-unfamiliar gut feeling, the kind that boils in your belly and slowly washes up your throat when you suddenly realize your world is being flipped upside-down.
I realized I wanted to be a journalist.
Later that day, I kept up with my usual routine. I suffered through Geometry class, endured an English lesson on Hamlet and drove across Janesville to my internship as a paper pusher at the armed forces recruitment center. I told the sergeant I had changed my mind about joining the U.S. Army right out of high school. He was disappointed about not meeting his recruitment quota, but glad to hear I’d found my ideal path.
My parents were relieved to hear I wasn’t trying to pursue a career as a combat photographer anymore.
I worked on Craig High School’s Criterion newspaper for the next year, learning more about journalism by being a part of the student group that designed monthly editions.
I spent the last few months of my senior year in high school scrambling to apply to various colleges in Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. Two accepted me: Northern Illinois University, despite my not-so-stellar ACT score, and UW-Whitewater, on the condition that I write an appeal as to why I belong there and how I could prove my poor K-12 grade point average would not carry over into their lecture halls.
I went with the emotional appeal, and it worked.
My mom and dad met here. They played Euchre and Sheepshead with a group of friends in Clem Hall and danced on tables at a bar one time.
That was partly why I came here. To carry on that family legacy.
But the final deciding factor was the opportunity to work at the award-winning Royal Purple student newspaper. Former Janesville Gazette editor Scott Angus coached me through picking a good journalism school, and he recommend UW-Whitewater.
I once asked Scott Angus about getting a job at the Gazette when I was just 10 years old. I’d been reading Anna Marie Lux columns since I was six, and I’d helped a friend with a paper route once. I was told to go get a degree and then come back.
I guess I took that advice fairly literally, because I managed to earn a part-time job designing pages at the Gazette during my sophomore year of college.
The skills and professionalism I picked up through my weekends gig in Janesville thrust me further forward, and I brought those skills back to UW-Whitewater every week with fresh enthusiasm on how to improve my quality of writing every day.
It even gave me the confidence to pursue a highly challenging internship in Washington, D.C. the summer before my final semester ahead of graduation this December.
As I look back on my years of study at UW-Whitewater, I realize the experience was some of both expectation and reality. Some things did work out as hoped: Involvement, friends, girlfriend. Some things didn’t: Saving all kinds of money and packing my bags to move out to the West Coast to work in the luxurious Monterey, California. Truthfully, that’s not me. My roots are here in the Midwest.
I learned so much in just four strenuous years. AP Style, the inverted pyramid, concise sentences, impartiality in reporting, proper interview conduct. You name it. And I’m so immensely glad and grateful for every person who helped me along the way so that I could get to where I am now. I’m proud to say I will be seeking a professional journalism job right out of college.
I’m most certainly a far-cry away from the shy, airheaded 17-year-old who slacked off in classes and blew off photography assignments regularly. My colleagues could testify to my time management skills being superior to that of even when I first started at both the Gazette and Royal Purple.
The world is no longer black and white in my eyes. It’s not simply carrying on others’ legacy or trying to prove my worth by volunteering to go overseas and fight “bad guys.” Instead, I’m happy to be planning to work and live here, where I aim to tell the richly meaningful stories of our fellow citizens in the communities around us and help keep our populace informed. It’s truly an honor to be a part of this local network of journalists.
If I were to go back to that day in my photography class when I happened upon an old edition of National Geographic with the “Afghan Girl” pictured on the cover, I would do nothing differently. I would accept my change of hearty time and dive head first into the field of journalism all over again.