IAN SMAY: MY SUMMER AT THE TIMES

My name is Ian Smay, and for the last three months, I have spent my summer break as an intern/freelance writer for The Times. In less than a week, I will move back to Pullman to start my sophomore year at Washington State University. I attended Dayton High School where I graduated with the class of 2015.

When I was younger, journalism was not the route I had planned in life. I wanted to work in sports as a trainer. Sometime around my freshman or sophomore year of high school, that changed.

While I was always interested in attending law school, my undergraduate plan changed. I took a great interest in news, and soon decided that I would be a journalist at some point in my life. I looked into WSU, where my sister had completed part of her college years.

That is how I got to where I am today: an undergrad at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, which is widely regarded as one of the best journalism schools in the nation.

While I was nearing the end of the spring 2016 semester, I realized that an internship with a local paper would be great for experience (and maybe a little bit of resume building.) One thing led to another, and I found myself sitting in the Times office on a weekend near the end of the school year chatting with my new boss and editor, Ken Graham.

After speaking with Ken and looking ahead to the summer, I of course had some worries. None of these were because of anything Ken had said, but was because I was going to be finally working in a job in my future career field. It was my first job outside of the Dayton City Pool, where I had worked the past three summers. I was also worried that I would not like writing for a paper, and that maybe it wasn't for me.

My first assignment after I moved back for summer break was to cover the District 9 track meet in College Place. Most of the day was spent taking pictures with a camera I had never used before and was way over my head. At the end of the meet, I carried out my first two interviews with the Dayton and Waitsburg coaches. It was my only story for that week, and I spent a lot of time processing my photos and writing my article, trying to make them both perfect.

Since then, I have covered various events and written about a wide range of topics that I would not have been exposed to if not for this job. I talked with Jeff Monyak, a taxidermist who showed me some of the great detail his pieces contain. I wrote about the grain elevators that dot Columbia County and are a big part of harvest. I even did a piece about the New Old Time Chautauqua, a movement that I had never heard of before I was tasked with writing about them.

It was experiences like these that made me realize that my love for journalism was alive and well, and that any worries I had were misplaced. Learning about new topics has always been a big interest to me I realized that I would get to continue learning about various topics as a part of my career.

I also learned a lot of invaluable lessons about how the news world actually works. In a classroom, everything seems very formal. It became apparent rapidly that covering stories and interviewing people of interest is oftentimes an informal encounter. I also gained amazing writing experience and learned how to connect with people and hopefully how to present news in a way that engages different people.

I will miss walking into the office every Tuesday morning and being greeted by Dena Wood, another reporter and editor at The Times. I'll also miss discussing the week's stories with Ken and deciding what needed to be done, as I was often given a good amount of freedom in what I covered.

I'd like to thank everyone at The Times, especially Ken Graham for giving me this opportunity, and Dena Wood for making me feel like a welcome part of the team. No matter where I go in my career, and even though I plan on being a news anchor and eventually a lawyer, I will always have fond memories from my summer with The Times to look back on.

I would also like to give my thanks to the readers, who made this job possible, and to the many people that stopped me around town and spoke highly of my writing, as it helped reassure that I was in the right field.

Even though I must go back to my studies, one can safely assume I would rather be on my laptop writing about the week's news for The Times.