Life's Playbook
Sometimes our playbook doesn’t pan out quite like we thought it would. The first 22 years for me were planned out. Grow up, do well, graduate high school, a four-year university, and then figure it out.
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I believed a lot of people had their lives together at this point. For me, I had ENDLESS possibilities. Travel the world? Get a full time job? Try a new city? Move back to NYC? Find a job closer to home? Take a job in news? Take a job in sports?
You may have noticed that in this list “more school” wasn’t on the radar. However, God’s playbook had that written. Mine did not.
Last November, one of my professors and mentors at Elon, Mark Walpole (who also worked at NC State) offered me tickets to a Wolfpack basketball game. The school is an hour from Elon’s campus. I had a friend attending, and FREE SPORTS. I was going! I decided to make a day of it and visit the NC State campus. I knew they had a master’s program that would fit my interest (because of another Elon professor, Troy Carlton).
Long story short, I visited, met with professors in the program, fell in love with the campus and in an instance went from a born and bred Tar Heel to digging out a Wolfpack hat my mom had won years ago (pictured).
Of course there were many more steps like taking the GRE, applying, being accepted and financial planning. Obviously, in the months after I graduated Elon, all of those came to surface.
NEW GAME PLAN
Currently, I am moving my stuff to Raleigh to start a graduate program studying sports. I have accepted a graduate assistantship with the university. This means I will be paid to do work (research, teach or other) throughout the week. Also, the university is paying my tuition. Basically, I am being PAID to go to grad school. An offer I truly couldn’t turn down.
I still plan to go into sports journalism and hope to continue reporting while in school. As a lifelong fan of the ACC, this would be a dream.
There are still many unanswered questions, excitement and anxiety. I am truly thankful for my family, friends, professors, and mentors for talking me through this process.
Let’s do this! Go Pack!
