The Road Ahead
By Tom Heijne

So where do I start? I guess at where I am today – a junior at American University in Washington, D.C. I've spent the last three years studying print and broadcast journalism and am currently a broadcast journalism major. I started college with a print concentration. However, as a visual learner, I felt I would be better at informing others visually. Regardless, my love of writing compels me to continue doing it as part of my career.

My name is Tom Heijne, an English immigrant of ten years. I grew up in Weaverham, England with my parents and one younger brother. The village I lived in was kind of a rough neighborhood which is why I was so happy to move to America in 1999. At age eleven
I entered my first American school in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, very different from the small English schools I was used to.

I started out a very shy kid, afraid to speak because I felt very different from everyone else. It was that and the fact that every time I did speak I was asked to repeat certain words with my English accent at least 25 times, just for amusement.

As I graduated to high school, I gained more confidence and by my senior year I was the captain of my swim team. It was in high school that I first realized my interest in writing. Not much of a speech-maker, I soon found I was more capable at expressing myself through the written word rather than spoken.

This changed when I went to college. Joining a fraternity on campus helped bolster a lot more self-confidence. I became an excellent conversationalist leading me to where I am today as a Broadcast Journalism major.

As a junior in college, I am looking at my near future in the real world with much uncertainty. I join my generation in looking out in to a very tense world with many problems. As a journalist-in-training, this gives me a lot of news to cover, but it also unnerves me personally about my future.

It is almost the end of the semester here at American University, and I've got stress flying at me from all different places. The summer internship hunt has been especially stressful as I've interviewed with only two places. All I can do is wait it out until I find if I get either position. It's a critical time for me to get an internship. I need to boost my resume as much as possible before real-job hunting upon graduation, and the networking possibilities are really helpful down the road.

On top of resumes comes summer classes and planning the last straightaway before graduation. After switching my minor this year from audio technology to graphic design, I have only three semesters, including the summer, in which to complete that minor. It's a lot of "graphic design" to make up in only three semesters and I imagine that come this time next year I will have had my fill of that subject!

It will be worth the effort. I believe that I'll need all kinds of weapons at my call as I involve myself in the field of journalism. As my professor, Bill Gentile, keeps telling me, "The journalism industry has no idea where it's going right now." And that's a little scary. It's also motivating because it makes feel that someone out there will give me a shot, especially if they're a little uncertain in they're own right.

On the other hand, almost all of my friends that graduated last year are now in graduate school because they couldn't find jobs. For me, graduate school doesn't seem like an economically-intelligent plan... my tuition is paid by loans.

So, I hope you'll join me as I shape my pathway into the real world. In the months to come, I'll be chronicling my successes and hardships, and reflecting on my generation as they leave the cloistered comfort of college. Hopefully, I'll report more successes and less "trauma"... for everyone.