Obligatory

Life, and this is far from groundbreaking, works in funny ways. I'm a competitive person, although it doesn't show most of the time. Let's take where I work just as an example. The reason I work where I do is so I can focus on school and get a paycheck in the process. That was the plan anyway, and now I'm #2 in our site out of roughly 600 people and #20 nationally in our company out of approximately 6000 people. It adds stress, but I could win a free trip.

I had no outlet for my competitive nature after high school really. Since I have been in school I seem to compete against myself for my grades and others I guess you could say. I've made the dean's list every semester since I have been at Park. When I went back and was accepted in the fall of 2007, I started a separate blog to keep track of the experiences. I should have kept it.

This blog was the driving force in bringing me back to something I have had a passion for since I was in high school, and probably before that. Writing, and more specifically journalism, is something I feel a great deal of attachment to. I've worked very hard at it since returning to school in January of 2008. I've endured trials, tests and rewards. My wife and I bought our first house. We adopted a dog. I lost a job. I got another one. I lost that one and got my current one. We bought a Great Dane. Through those ups and downs, it is nice to begin to see some of the payoff.

Tonight I attended an awards ceremony for Missouri colleges. Our paper won sweepstakes, which is an easy way of saying all the points compiled for our efforts in about 30 categories were added up and were higher than any other school in our division. I won a few individual awards, but this sweeps award was pretty sweet. It's still sinking in what we accomplished. The sum of our parts equals the top paper in the state of Missouri among colleges our size. I'll let you in on a little secret, in the big boy division, the University of Missouri which is thought of as a premier journalism school, did not win. That's not to say it's not a quality institution for our profession, because it is, but this shows that you don't have to go to one of those schools to get a quality education and practical experience for journalism.

Next year myself and another of my colleagues will become co-editors of this paper. I only hope we can contribute on a higher level to bring home this award again next year, because right now it's pretty cool to be where we are at. Who knew several years ago when I was only dreaming of living in this town that I would not only be successful in my personal live, but finally moving in the direction of success in a profession I should have tried to get into in the first place.