The Best Stories Find the Journalist, and Journalism Found Me

By Nikki Roberts

I have learned many important lessons during my undergraduate journalism career at DePaul. One of these lessons is that sometimes a reporter finds a story, but the best stories often seek out the reporter. In my five years working in student media, I’ve found this to be true because not only have great stories found me, but journalism as a field found me when I had no direction.

As a high school junior in Aurora, Illinois, my only ambition was to work at my three part-time jobs so I could move out of my parents’ house and to Chicago the moment I turned 18 — or once I graduated high school. I knew the importance of obtaining a high school diploma, but it was never a primary goal for me; whenever I had the money saved, I would leave the suburbs.

I had no plan or direction for my life after high school graduation (yes, I graduated, and with a decent GPA to boot). I was in honors and AP classes because school work and test taking are skills that I never had to practice or study for in order to master, but I spent more time roaming the halls and confined to the dean’s office than I did in class on the days I actually made it to school.

However, my lack of ambition did not mean I was an apathetic teen with a lack of interests. In fact, the opposite was true. I was a music obsessed bookworm — I read every rock ‘n’ roll biography at my local library by the time I was 14 — who never stopped writing. I would write several times a week in a journal, I dabbled in non-fiction personal essays and I internally celebrated every time an English teacher assigned a composition assignment instead of a multiple-choice exam.

At the end of my junior year, a friend who was on staff at our school paper, The Stampede, recommended I apply for a position in the school’s only journalism class. I wrote a sample article about the differences between medicinal and recreational marijuana since I had heard many students express contradicting views on the upcoming medicinal legalization bill, and the story ran in the last issue of my junior year. After seeing my name in print, I was shocked to realize I was actually excited for school to begin in the fall.

My only regret about high school journalism is that I didn’t apply earlier. Our class functioned as a newsroom with periodic, news-focused assignments. As an online writer, I was guaranteed a voice on the paper’s website, Metea Media, while also having the freedom to contribute to the print edition of the paper whenever I had an idea for a feature story. Most importantly to my success in school, “newspaper” — as the journalism kids called it — was the last class of the day, which kept me from cutting out of school early. This isn’t to say I didn’t skip morning classes or sneak out of the school mid-day only to return in time for newspaper, but joining the school paper gave me a duty to be involved and informed about my school.

I may have ditched class and fallen asleep during AP tests, but I flew through my ACT exam with perfect marks in the reading and English sections. My mother begged me to apply to at least a few colleges so, without doing any research, I cast my line out to three Illinois schools — Northern Illinois University, Loyola University and DePaul University — and reeled in three acceptance letters that each included the respective university’s largest merit scholarships.

I was a wild teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. Few of my close friends were going away to universities in the fall, and those who were continuing their college education planned to attend our local community college, College of DuPage. I decided to enroll at DePaul University and declared myself an English major, since I wanted to write but couldn’t see myself as a reporter.

A month before I graduated, The Stampede staff swept the NSPA Pacemaker Awards and my Meta Media team accepted four online awards. After the ceremony, I attended a keynote speech given by Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika. She spoke passionately about covering police shootings of young black men and the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I sat in the back of the room beside my journalism teacher but, at the conclusion of her speech, I was in her face with a notepad and a pen, eager to learn how I could be involved in exposing systematic injustice through my writing.

When I moved to Chicago a few months later to begin my academic career at DePaul, I reached out to Ihejirika and regularly asked her for advice, a phone call or coffee. When our schedules never lined up, I accepted that I would have to remain in digital conversation with her via Twitter and email, and the next three years of my undergraduate experience flew by.

If I have learned anything as a student journalist, it is that everyone in the field knows each other and what might seem like a causal connection will always lead to deeper connections or a shared network of colleagues.

Last fall, I attended the “Power 25,” a gathering of Chicago’s 25 most powerful women in media and their colleagues at the Union League Club. When I saw Ihejirika walk in, I knew I had to re-introduce myself, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Would she remember me? Was it worth noting that I was the eager freshman who had harassed her by email three years ago?

Quite out of character for me, I approached her timidly and began, “Hi, Maudlyne, I’m Nikki Roberts. I doubt you’d remember me, but I heard you speak three years ago and…”

“Oh, my God! You’re the senior from Metea Valley who was going to DePaul! Of course, I remember you!”

I’ve had many small victories that have helped me beat imposter syndrome and feel like an equal among my intelligent journalism peers at DePaul, but there is nothing quite like having a highly respected reporter remember you from when you were a completely unexperienced high school student. I am not one to place much of a belief in fate, but it is hard to convince myself I don’t belong in this field when journalism found me, and continues to find me, in the smallest, unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

Blog Post

February 6, 2020

 

The Best Stories Find the Journalist, and Journalism Found Me

By Nikki Roberts

 

I have learned many important lessons during my undergraduate journalism career at DePaul. One of these lessons is that sometimes a reporter finds a story, but the best stories often seek out the reporter. In my five years working in student media, I’ve found this to be true because not only have great stories found me, but journalism as a field found me when I had no direction.

 

As a high school junior in Aurora, Illinois, my only ambition was to work at my three part-time jobs so I could move out of my parents’ house and to Chicago the moment I turned 18 — or once I graduated high school. I knew the importance of obtaining a high school diploma, but it was never a primary goal for me; whenever I had the money saved, I would leave the suburbs.

 

I had no plan or direction for my life after high school graduation (yes, I graduated, and with a decent GPA to boot). I was in honors and AP classes because school work and test taking are skills that I never had to practice or study for in order to master, but I spent more time roaming the halls and confined to the dean’s office than I did in class on the days I actually made it to school.

 

However, my lack of ambition did not mean I was an apathetic teen with a lack of interests. In fact, the opposite was true. I was a music obsessed bookworm — I read every rock ‘n’ roll biography at my local library by the time I was 14 — who never stopped writing. I would write several times a week in a journal, I dabbled in non-fiction personal essays and I internally celebrated every time an English teacher assigned a composition assignment instead of a multiple-choice exam.

 

At the end of my junior year, a friend who was on staff at our school paper, The Stampede, recommended I apply for a position in the school’s only journalism class. I wrote a sample article about the differences between medicinal and recreational marijuana since I had heard many students express contradicting views on the upcoming medicinal legalization bill, and the story ran in the last issue of my junior year. After seeing my name in print, I was shocked to realize I was actually excited for school to begin in the fall.

 

My only regret about high school journalism is that I didn’t apply earlier. Our class functioned as a newsroom with periodic, news-focused assignments. As an online writer, I was guaranteed a voice on the paper’s website, Metea Media, while also having the freedom to contribute to the print edition of the paper whenever I had an idea for a feature story. Most importantly to my success in school, “newspaper” — as the journalism kids called it — was the last class of the day, which kept me from cutting out of school early. This isn’t to say I didn’t skip morning classes or sneak out of the school mid-day only to return in time for newspaper, but joining the school paper gave me a duty to be involved and informed about my school.

 

I may have ditched class and fallen asleep during AP tests, but I flew through my ACT exam with perfect marks in the reading and English sections. My mother begged me to apply to at least a few colleges so, without doing any research, I cast my line out to three Illinois schools — Northern Illinois University, Loyola University and DePaul University — and reeled in three acceptance letters that each included the respective university’s largest merit scholarships.

 

I was a wild teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. Few of my close friends were going away to universities in the fall, and those who were continuing their college education planned to attend our local community college, College of DuPage. I decided to enroll at DePaul University and declared myself an English major, since I wanted to write but couldn’t see myself as a reporter.

 

A month before I graduated, The Stampede staff swept the NSPA Pacemaker Awards and my Meta Media team accepted four online awards. After the ceremony, I attended a keynote speech given by Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika. She spoke passionately about covering police shootings of young black men and the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I sat in the back of the room beside my journalism teacher but, at the conclusion of her speech, I was in her face with a notepad and a pen, eager to learn how I could be involved in exposing systematic injustice through my writing.

 

When I moved to Chicago a few months later to begin my academic career at DePaul, I reached out to Ihejirika and regularly asked her for advice, a phone call or coffee. When our schedules never lined up, I accepted that I would have to remain in digital conversation with her via Twitter and email, and the next three years of my undergraduate experience flew by.

 

If I have learned anything as a student journalist, it is that everyone in the field knows each other and what might seem like a causal connection will always lead to deeper connections or a shared network of colleagues.

 

Last fall, I attended the “Power 25,” a gathering of Chicago’s 25 most powerful women in media and their colleagues at the Union League Club. When I saw Ihejirika walk in, I knew I had to re-introduce myself, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Would she remember me? Was it worth noting that I was the eager freshman who had harassed her by email three years ago?

 

Quite out of character for me, I approached her timidly and began, “Hi, Maudlyne, I’m Nikki Roberts. I doubt you’d remember me, but I heard you speak three years ago and…”

 

“Oh, my God! You’re the senior from Metea Valley who was going to DePaul! Of course, I remember you!”

 

I’ve had many small victories that have helped me beat imposter syndrome and feel like an equal among my intelligent journalism peers at DePaul, but there is nothing quite like having a highly respected reporter remember you from when you were a completely unexperienced high school student. I am not one to place much of a belief in fate, but it is hard to convince myself I don’t belong in this field when journalism found me, and continues to find me, in the smallest, unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

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