This is me toying around on Photo Booth in my living room! by Tyler Curtis-Peterson
Starting in middle school, I came to realize that I was particularly bookish, especially in comparison to most of my peers. I also enjoyed writing and crafting fiction, as well as writing about books I had read or just writing analytical essays in general, and this carried on throughout high school. But in middle school, the curriculum and class discussions became highly politicized because of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I found myself to be quite interested in politics and hungry for knowledge as well as developing an aptitude for discussing the subject. But this was also the case with my developing geekish interest in literature, comics, art, music, and film.
I have fun reading and writing and I find the written word to be a rich and fascinating medium, and although I realize that my generation is much less literate than those that preceded us, I hope and like to believe that there will be a renaissance in the mass interest in and digestion of the written word. Journalism is important, and studying it gives me the skills to adequately disseminate important information, but also the skills to accumulate information and digest it. It also has aided me in my creative writing endeavors. On top of that, some of my favorite authors, to whom I admire immensely such as Hunter S. Thompson, but also Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway, had stints, some longer than others, in journalism.
In five years, I see myself as a staff writer for an arts and culture magazine, hopefully in New York or London. I might be in graduate school, as well. Hopefully I will still be playing music, and possibly even enough so that I do not have to have a job anywhere, and maybe just freelance. But in the event that my music career does not take off, I would be happy typing up word documents regarding the subjects which I find the most important and interesting. My experience playing music and going to shows gives me an insight and an edge in music writing, as I empathize more with the lifestyle of an artist, although it’s much less intensive and frequent than those subject I wish to cover.
Magazine writing is the most interesting for me, although there is speculation and uncertainty about the future of that particular industry. But that seems to be the case with print media in general, even though a little over a year ago there was a cautious optimism about how magazines would fair in the wake of the digital revolution .
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