I was a part of the furniture at the student newspaper at my university, writing and editing at all hours of the day, practicing and learning, making mistakes and swearing to never repeat them. Repeating them. Along the way I seized every opportunity that was even the smallest of steps toward this career. In journalism classes I endlessly studied and dissected the wordplay of the best scribes in the business. I wrote, I re-wrote, I interviewed, and I edited. A lot.

All this in the name of wanting — some days maybe even needing — to enter the world occupied by the ink-stained wretches. All this to be one of them. And if this quest sounds narrow-sighted and obsessive, that’s only because it was. I never looked at journalism in the same way people look at doorknobs or refrigerators, as objects to be made and then sold. No: it was a world I aspired to belong to, and more – a mountain to be conquered.