For the first time in my three college years, I have a clear endgame in mind. It is an exhilarating feeling, but certainly not one I expected to have by now.

I will be the co-editor in chief this spring for saccityexpress.com. As I approach a relaxing Christmas and a festive New Year’s, anticipation looms over me. Not so much for the holidays, as they’re always a consistent source of comfort food for me, but for the all new responsibilities and capabilities I’ll have when classes resume. My priorities have certainly changed in more ways than one.

If I sound baffled by where life has led me, it’s because of a lack of premeditation on my part. I arrived at this position by taking an elective I wanted to try. I urge other students to do the same as they’re registering for spring classes. We community college students are gifted with a few years to experiment. We’re paying less than we would at a four-year university because we’re unsure of where to go and what to do. And this is fine.

I didn’t always know I would become a journalism major. During my high school years, I dabbled with the idea of film or music studies before even settling on the idea of writing for a living. This was due less to passion for the art, but rather to the increasingly good grades I got on AP English courses and the increasingly poor ones I received in AP music theory.

Upon graduating high school, my ideas for how to use this apparent talent were similar to those any cynical, naïve young adult. I thought I might freelance for awhile, submitting blog posts about the post-2012 election political climate in between the more “fun” alternative of reviewing movies and albums. Who would publish my work? At that point, the idea was far more important than the details to 18-year-old me.

Of course, I had a mountain of general education courses to climb before I could settle on a major. I begrudgingly took math, science, and history classes at the City College Davis Center my first year of college, a bit stunned that I wasn’t having the life-changing experiences promised to me by older relatives during my high school years. I knew I had to shake things up somehow for my second year, so over the summer of 2014 I decided I’d expand my horizons and drive farther to take classes at the main campus in Sacramento.

In hindsight, this was the first of several essential choices that led me to where I am now. I found two classes far more interesting than anything I’d taken up to that point: argument and debate, and newswriting and reporting. Both felt less like requirements and more like exciting new ways to constructively communicate my passionate opinions. At this point I was torn between majoring in communication (generally leading into fields such as public relations) and journalism (which I associated primarily with the news).

Upon finishing my fall 2014 finals, I signed up for another communication course amid my remaining general education requirements, this time in public speaking. But for the next few weeks, I found myself thinking about the school newspaper, which was constantly mentioned in my newswriting and reporting class. I kind of missed having an extracurricular activity with a recurring group to work with, since I’d run cross-country and played in the wind ensemble during high school and thoroughly enjoyed both.
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Against my better judgment, I dropped the communication course near the end of December and signed up to write for the City College Express. The rest is history—and thankfully, the positive kind.

After a few initial “growing pains” in understanding the group dynamic of working with editors to write an article, I found the transition from long-form, independent writing to succinct delivery of information to be seamless. Within months of my first semester with the Express, I found myself making friends with people I’d only known by name from previous classes, honing my interviewing and writing skills, and learning more about my surroundings than ever before. Instead of being a fish out of water in the big city, I now find myself scanning local news, visiting new places, and trying harder to stay in contact with new people I meet.

I could never have predicted that I’d be an editor for a newspaper I joined on a whim, or that it would be the deciding factor in my plan to get a journalism degree and write for the news. And I’m sure that many other students at City College and beyond are a last-minute choice away from discovering what they want to do with their lives.

Whether you want to join a club, try your hand at art, play a sport, or contribute to student government, City College is just the type of place to go for all this. As I’ve made my favorite memories from a last-minute decision, I firmly believe all of you can do the same.

So go forth and follow your hearts. I, and everyone at the Express, will be here to listen to your stories every step of the way.