According to my mother, when I was not even two years old she caught me “reading” a book. It was a book she read to me all the time and I was mimicking the sounds as I followed along with the words. Even though I was not technically sounding out words, she claims that moment was when she saw my love of reading begin. When I was three I began actually reading. The first book I read was a Sesame Street book I found in the reading corner at preschool. I clearly remember how excited I was that I could now read myself books and would not have to rely on adults. As time went on I continued reading any book I could get my hands on (except the Magic Treehouse series, I hated those). Second grade came along and it was time to learn how to type. I was excited until we actually started learning and I realized how difficult it was for me. While all of the other students were on levels five and six, I was stuck on level two trying to type the alphabet in two minutes. Fortunately, in the next few years my parents allowed me to have an email account. I communicated with friends this way and it let me practice my typing skills. Around this time I was still reading a ton, but I was reading the same books over and over again. My parents wanted me to explore more than a few books, so I was bribed. I had to read one new book every week for a year and I would receive a laptop. After struggling for a year, I received my first macbook and created an iChat account. iChat improved my typing speed immensely because I felt bad that people had to wait so long for me to respond. Middle school arrived and I decided to join the book club my favorite english teacher was starting. A few months in, we read a book entitled A Mango Shaped Space. The entire story is centered around a girl with synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the senses are cross wired. This was when I realized that to an average human “A” was not red and my name did not look like cotton candy. To this day, a book meant for 12 year olds is one of the books I find most relatable. I began researching synesthesia and trying to find any information I could on it, however it is rather uncommon and there has been very few studies done. After experimenting with research for my own personal use, I was assigned a research paper on Hollywood in the 1920s. This was the first time I used the internet for proper research and when I realized I may be interested in working in the entertainment/media industry. In 2011 I was at a high school where I was extremely unhappy, so I turned to blogging as an outlet. I wrote about fashion, beauty, makeup, and sometimes baking. I loved having writing as a creative outlet but I also wanted the blog to be more personal, so I created a YouTube channel. YouTube brought more writing into the equation through comments and other interactions, like tweeting, with viewers. This sort of writing was much quicker and less formal than blog posts, but just as enjoyable. Even though I stopped blogging and making videos after a couple of years, the experience made me realize what a great advertising platform the internet can be. In my junior year AP Literature class, we read The Great Gatsby. I had never actually looked forward to reading a novel in high school so I was incredibly excited by this. I wrote multiple papers on the novel and kept finding new things to discuss as I kept rereading it. It is the only book I have ever had fun writing a paper on and continually enjoy rereading without getting bored. As junior year came to a close I was nominated to apply for National Art Honor Society. This was a huge deal because only a few students were nominated each year and even fewer were accepted. I spent many hours perfecting my application so that my photography could be displayed in the coveted NAHS show and after all my hard work, I got accepted into the prestigious society. Also at the end of my junior year, I was assigned a final project in my AP US History course. We had to make a short film of any sort as long as it pertained to US history. My friends and I worked together on writing the script for what we called “The Real Housewives of United States History.” The writing process was interesting because we were taking history as far back as the 15th century and modernizing it with today’s media. My final high school assignment completely encapsulated everything I had learned about media since the beginning of high school. I wrote a research paper explaining how social media has changed advertising and marketing by making the consumer more central to the process. I focused on three industries: new media, sports, and fashion. Months after turning the paper in, I received it in the mail with feedback from my teacher. His feedback said that of all of my writing he had read in the past two years, the portion of my paper on social media marketing in the fashion industry was the strongest. Because I want to work in this field, his comments assured me that all of the media trends I have paid attention to and all of the ways I personally have used media are stepping stones to get me there. Before creating this timeline, I believed that my focus on media had only come about in the past few years, however now I see my entire life has lead up to my still growing interest in new media.