Lecturer Bill Hancock with Recipients Anna Kwidzinska and Timothy J. Horneman

Just outside of my apartment window is the black rooftop of Starbucks. As soon as I first turned the key and stepped over the threshold in June, I wanted to scream from the top of that rooftop, if I may be so bold as to use the cliché.
“I can pay for my own apartment!”

But, realizing that I may run the risk of scaring my coffee providers, I decided not to. Instead, this piece of paper may be able to do the trick.

It is true; I can pay for my own apartment and my proud of that. I think few college students can say that. But, I suppose that’s what I have been striving for in the past two decades. Independence is the key to my life as well as my writing.

Two years at The Marquette Tribune have polished me into an adventurous reporter and a writer with her own unique voice, one which she is not afraid to share. I learned and am still learning to stand by myself amidst a flutter of magazine and newspaper pages. While at times, I can be swayed by the winds of a thousand styles scattered across the nation’s dailies, in the end I will trust my gut. I may be only 20 and still malleable but I have developed a strong base for myself. I know how to write and what to write about even though inspiration may come from all directions, whether it is the sports section or the 10 o’clock news.

I also know what I plan to achieve in my writing. Sometimes we must follow the path of the masters that have come before us, but other times we have to slash through the jungle alone to reach freedom outside of and within ourselves.

Nowadays, this is more important than ever. When bookshelves are filled with diaries of the Pamela Andersons of the world, we have to fight to protect what the written language really is.
When the courts are jailing those who speak the truth and stand by their promises it is imperative to fight for our rights as journalists.

When baseball legends are taken steroids or national leaders are setting up constitutionally hazy detention centers, is it not the public’s right to know?

Perhaps I’m the only idealist left in the world but I, for one, am willing to put up a fight for an independent press. And I will fight with my words.

I have been published since my sophomore year of high school, when I was a teen columnist for my local newspaper. I started writing for the Marquette Tribune almost as soon as I got there, and after two years of reporting everything from lecturers to graduation rates to how much the basketball coach is paid, I will be an assistant editor on the Campus News desk next year.

After my few years of journalism, I thought I knew a lot about asking questions and writing to make deadline (or almost make it). But journalism is a profession in which I keep learning, and the following taught me that important lesson:

Sitting in a bookstore, I was trying to get my stupid tape recorder to work. In a chair across from me: Phil Hellmuth Jr., 1989 World Series of Poker Champion and, because of his reputation as the egotistical “Poker Brat,” probably the most famous person I have ever interviewed. I fumbled with the recorder, but it wasn’t cooperating. So, in the most surreal moment of my journalism career, Hellmuth, who gained fame for his outbursts during televised poker tournaments, reached over and tried to fix it. Since neither of us was able to fix it, he patiently waited during the interview as I scribbled his words in my notebook. By those simple actions, I learned more about the man behind the brat persona than I could have in the 25 minutes I interview him.

I have learned to appreciate these simple details as I progress in my career. When talking to sources for a story, I try to pick up details based on how they say things, and perhaps, I can ask a follow-up question or learn more, especially in a profile, about their motivations. If I dig through a document, I read it carefully and can ask experts about some of the most minute-but-important details.

And I hope to make it far, just by looking for the simplest but most important details about a person or an issue. I’m not sure exactly what I’d like to do in journalism after I graduate from Marquette. I could be a columnist, where I write profiles and have some influence, as I did when I wrote my column for the local paper. I could write stories on religious issues, which I enjoy investigating, or perhaps stories on political issues, which are always fun to write. But no matter what, I will do what I love: looking for the little detail that makes all the difference between a run-of-the-mill story and a great story.