I am not a very emotional person. That's what I've been told about myself, at least.

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In situations where you'd expect me to be freaking out, angry or excited — during a deadline meeting or when I've just been told I'm going to be editor-in-chief — it's not uncommon for those around me to comment on how calm I seem. Bored, even.

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The things people tell you about yourself, though, are more complicated than they let on.

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When I was growing up, a quiet kid who thrived in school but never quite felt right there, it seemed like the most important thing about me was that I didn't have to try. Reading and writing came easily to me, I remember hearing. I was a natural artist, I seemed to pick up most subjects quickly. I was a pleasure to have in class.

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I didn't know enough about the world or myself to question it. School had always been my happy place, so much easier than the real world, where there was no routine and no quiet time.

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So as I got older, and as I struggled in school, I didn't know what to make of myself.

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I found refuge in the places where I felt the most valued. For a newly-freshman me, that was the publications classroom. I had been a member of the yearbook staff in middle school, which was my first experience with writing for an audience. I realized that I liked doing it, and that people liked what I wrote. Even as a freshman staff member, I felt that my editors listened to my input as they tried to help me develop my skills, something I try my best to replicate now that I'm at the front of the room.

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So I've stayed. I rose to become design editor, then editor-in-chief, of the yearbook. My work expanded into journalism, and took on leadership roles there. I carved myself a niche in a massive high school, allowing my place in the journalism program to introduce me to  wonderful people, and allowing me to face the world with a purpose.

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Landing on journalism also cleared up a worry I'd had since I was five, when I filled an entire notebook with stick-figure drawings of different things I wanted to be when I grew up and cried when I learned I could only pick one. As a journalist, I didn't have to choose just one thing to devote my life to. If I could write about it, I could continue exploring the things that I cared about, whether it was wildlife across the world or people in my own community.

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And my writing skills have been transformed by this program, however stressful of a journey it’s been at times. I'm optimistic, though; friends and former classmates have told me that once you survive AJC, college writing is like nothing.

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But I'm not going to forget that I can struggle. That even if writing seems to come naturally to me, there will be times when I stare for weeks at the same blank document, times when the only way I can get myself to write is by spilling my feelings onto paper in the middle of the night.

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Because even if the writing seems to come naturally now, there was a time when things looked effortless and I couldn't have been struggling more.

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It was in my early years of high school that other people began to notice my problems in school. Around the time that what doctors had dismissed as "growing pains" started to look like something else, and what family had described as "shyness" didn't seem to quite fit. It was right around the time my school started remote learning.

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I was still getting good grades, still passionate about learning, but it didn't look easy anymore. Though, in all honesty, it had never been easy.

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I was a good student, sure, but it took so much to get there. The nights that bled into mornings trying to finish homework that I knew my classmates had done hours ago. The sitting in class, so overwhelmed by pain and sound and light that focusing was impossible. The way I could be sitting next to my peers and still feel so far away that I couldn't imagine starting a conversation with them.

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It wasn't until I was 17 that I was finally diagnosed with ADHD and autism, only a year or so after first being seen for the mysterious joint pain that had followed me all my life.

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I think I had known all along. But it still seemed contradictory. Journalism had, by then, taken up most of my life. I was attending events, interviewing strangers, making myself known to others in the name of reporting. It seemed like everything autistic people didn't do, but I couldn't imagine doing anything else. Lacking a prominent autistic journalist to look up to in the field, I threw myself even further into journalism to create that path for myself.

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The truth is that I am not an emotionless being, despite what it may look like from the outside.

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The truth is that I have struggled to write this essay about my relationship to journalism for months — and God only knows how many thousands of words I've written about journalism for scholarships, college admissions and personal projects. This essay in particular has left me awake at night thinking about my life, and my future in this field. I've struggled to put into words how much I think rural, small and southern journalism programs deserve a chance in a competition that, before this year, had never seen a winner as far south in this state as the capital. Much less my hometown.

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Because the truth is that I care so much about this program. The truth is that student journalism has changed and saved my life. And the truth is that when you care so deeply about something, trying to talk about it feels like an open wound.

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So even if it hurts, I'm going to keep talking about the things that matter, for the rest of my time with EHS Publications and for the rest of my career as a journalist.