Hello! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Selena Seay-Reynolds and I am a 21-year-old aspiring journalist, writer and designer at the University of Southern California. However, I'm hardly from around here. An East Coast native, I was born and raised in a small town on the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and attended the same small private school in Princeton from kindergarten through twelfth grade.
Strange as it seem be for a broadcast major, I actually grew up without TV in my house or even a daily newspaper (a result of my own father's employment as a journalist and subsequent aversion to media). However, as an early reader, I developed a passion for reading, language and communication at a young age. I'd always had a knack for writing as well, and in high school, one of my teachers suggested I join the school newspaper. From there, well, it was love at first sight.
Over the next year, I made the newspaper my top priority and became the youngest Editor in Chief in the history of the school's paper — a distinction which only further fueled my obsession. I discovered that editing perfectly matched my innate perfectionist streak, and I found myself staying late after school measuring picas and looking for absent Oxford commas. Moreover, journalism itself fulfilled my desire to communicate and learn — perhaps the most defining characteristic of my personality.
So, when it was time for me to start thinking about college, there was no question in my mind that I ought to pursue a career in journalism. Apart from loving the obsessive compulsive nature of editing, I had too many other interests to choose just one, and so settled on journalism as a profession that would allow me to study everything for the rest of my life. Moreover, I became enthralled with the seemingly noble idea of journalism as a sort of selfless public service and applied to the Annenberg School as a broadcast major, with the stated goal "not to change the world, but to ensure that others can."
However, after arriving at USC, I was quickly disillusioned. Given the fast-approaching demise of print media, I had decided that television would be the most impactful and sustainable avenue for me to pursue. But having grown up without television, I hardly realized what I was in for, and quickly became disgusted by the reality of having to wear a pound of makeup while stupidly smiling at a screen, all in an attempt to communicate with a largely unmotivated and dwindling audience.
Moreover, in a world where anyone can blog, post or Tweet just about anything, the race to be first has become increasingly hectic, and one which I have decided I want no part in. Though once intrigued by the fast-paced nature of journalism as a potential solution to my seeming inability to get anything done in the absence of a deadline, the fierceness of the competition to simply put out words repulses me. I originally (and still) want to be a journalist so that I may discover powerful stories and points of view, and expose them to people in order to help shift their perspectives and spark social change. However, these are things which take substantial time and effort, and cannot be simply churned out as part of a race.
Though I'm not exactly certain how to do this, I have a few ideas at present. At the same time as my faith in journalism began to flounder, I discovered my love for a new form of communication: photography. I realized the vast power that visual media hold, and the tremendous influence that representation has on society. Perhaps my biggest interests right now lie in the portrayal and treatment of women in society, and how to reform these in a supposedly 'post-feminist' yet still imperfect world. To do this, and affect real social change, I've realized that I must actually help create it, rather than merely wait around to report on it in the hope of inspiring others.
I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to do, but I'm not too worried. Right now, I'm still trying to discover and explore my passions. At the moment, I have an insanely cute pitweiner (yes, that's right, I said pitweiner), who looks just as silly as you'd imagine, and whom I share with my tall, dark and handsome boyfriend of over a year, Kaveh. When I'm not too busy, I try to spend as much of my free time as possible camping, reading, snowboarding, getting bruises while skateboarding, and talking with others in an attempt to find meaning in this thing we call life.
If you'd like to see some of my photography, you can either visit my SmugMug, or follow me on Twitter at @Selena_SR. I haven't posted anything on either for a while now, but I'm look forward to taking this class and getting back to doing both. ♣