Cline’s race is long, but she’s excited to start

By THE CLASS

Katie Cline, 20, grew up in North Carolina from ages 1 to 7, San Antonio, Texas from ages 7 to 17, and Georgia from age 17 to the present. Since she spent the bulk of her childhood in San Antonio, she has fond memories of her life spent there. Cline says its Mexican influence and distinct Tex-Mex culture made the city very special and culturally rich. However, she quickly formed a deep attachment to Columbus and Athens, Ga, the towns she now calls home.

Since she was little, Cline always wanted to attend the stereotypical SEC college. Her first impression of the University of Georgia, with its oak trees, white columns, and football mania, was one of an idealized college ripped right from the scenes of a movie. Georgia was large enough to give her the experience of being a “small fish in a big pond”, with the added benefit of offering in-state tuition; it was exactly what she had always wanted for her college experience.

When she arrived at UGA, she began writing for the Opinions section of the Red & Black Newspaper to help spur her journalistic writing efforts. Cline says that she prefers to use a recorder while interviewing. This allows her to focus on her subject and their conversation rather than focusing on transcribing their every word. Her favorite piece of writing is a Georgia College Press Association award-winning article that she wrote for The Red & Black, titled “Mayday Black Friday.” She enjoyed working on this piece because she valued the creative freedom she had when writing it. Through her love of writing, Cline pursued an English minor and thus encountered an English after 1700 course that she says was the worst class she had ever taken. The professor gave long, expansive lectures in a monotonic voice that left Cline falling asleep, even when seated in the front row.

In addition to her journalistic writing exploits, Cline has a large place in her heart for fictional writing and wishes to work in the publishing industry as an editor. Nick Hornby, who wrote her favorite book, A Long Way Down, is her favorite author. His British personality shine through his writing in his blunt and sarcastic way of incorporating dark humor into his work. Cline says that his writing feels real in this way, even though it is fictional. “The plot is twisted and hilarious,” she says.

When she imagines her life five years from now, Cline says that “the goal is to be at a publishing house.” She thinks a moment and adds, “the overall goal is to be an editor.”

However, Cline admits that becoming an editor takes some time. According to her estimation, one must work as an editorial assistant for three to five years. After clarifying that the publishing house would be working with fictional works, Cline pauses to think. She said she envisions herself perhaps living in an apartment with her boyfriend, but adds that marriage would be a bit soon for that point in her life. Ideally, she wants to be married around the age of 28.

At this stage in life, however, Cline enjoys living in Athens and being a UGA student, particularly for the sense of home she has established here.  Cline’s experience at the Oxford study abroad program last Spring inspired an appreciation for adventure and pushing one’s self beyond one’s perceived limits which she believes will hearten her endeavors beyond graduation.

The most meaningful advice Cline has gotten is from an essay written as a hypothetical commencement address by columnist Mary Schmich. The short essay goes deeply into small but meaningful pieces of advice about how to live a happy and deeply moving life. “Wear Sunscreen” as the essay has been nicknamed has gotten her through a variety of tough times since she first read it back in her junior year of high school. Cline has been diagnosed with anxiety and finds that her favorite line in the essay says, “the race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself.” Many of the short, well written lines from “Wear Sunscreen” have become daily mantras for her.

Take the answer you got from Brianna to the question you were assigned during the second class meeting. Write a sentence with that answer that follows coherently from what your classmates (and I) have added

Question 1: Where did you grow up, and what’s special about it? Brianna Blackman, 23, grew up all over the place, but most prominently in Killeen, Texas, and Fayetteville, Georgia. Brianna was a military “brat” (of course she’s not a brat, though!), her father making a career in the Army and her mother serving in the Air Force. Brianna remembers Killeen, Texas most fondly because she met many of her best friends there. Her family relocated to Fayetteville, Georgia upon her dad’s retirement from the Army, and she lived there for 10 years. Due to the transient nature of her living arrangements, Brianna said she was never able to form deep connections with others. As a result, she wants to stay in one place as an adult, somewhere on the west coast because she hasn’t lived there yet.

Q #2 Why did you decide to attend UGA?
Brianna was drawn to UGA for a number of reasons: the versatility of majors, the excellent academic reputation, in-state tuition, an active social and Greek life, and the football team (she’s not a huge football fan, but couldn’t image college life without it.)

After graduating in May, Brianna will miss her involvement with Impact, a UGA organization for social justice.

5. Brianna’s favorite and best written work to date is an article that ran in UGAzine about an Athfest half-marathon runner and his reasons for running, as well as his method of preparing for races. She is especially proud of this piece because she saw it through to the end and it was published.

6. What is your favorite book and why? Brianna’s favorite book is The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. As one of the first books she read all the way through in high school, Brianna loves this novel because of her ability to resonate with the main character.

3. What were your career goals when you started and how have they changed since? When she began UGA, Brianna was hoping to pursue accounting. “I can do that, I like math… [I can be] rich,” she says, laughing. But she said she hated it and switched her major “about eight times, to be honest,” she says. She says she started by imagining what was going to be the best option for her financially, whereas now, she is looking at what career will make her the most happy. After soul-searching, Brianna realized that she wants to go into student affairs and college life because being apart of organizations has become a very big part of who she is. “It went from business to more touchy-feely stuff.”

13.   After graduating in May, Brianna will miss being involved with Impact, a UGA organization for social justice.

J.K. Rowling is Brianna’s favorite author. She likes her so much because of the impact she’s had on other people’s lives. People have gone through so much through her writings and the connectivity there is around the series is amazing. At the end of the day there are negative houses but you can also bring out the positives in it, makes Brianna respect what she’s done.

14. Brianna prefers to use a recorder while interviewing. She finds that her notes are often hard to decipher after the fact, as people tend to “talk faster than [she] can write,” so she prefers to be able to listen to the audio again later if she needs to.

8. “I see myself in 5 years, probably in a student affairs position in a liberal arts college,” Brianna Blackman said. “I like the idea of going out west somewhere.” Blackman has been looking at different liberal arts colleges for a master’s degree.  A college in Illinois caught her eye, and she plans on staying in the area and writing. She hopes that durign that time, one of her screenplays might be picked up for a movie.

7. What’s the most meaningful advice you’ve ever gotten?

The most meaningful advice Brianna has ever gotten is “once you know someone’s story, you can’t help loving them. ” This phrase helps her to have a deep understanding of other’s story and makes her appreciate people more. “Even I think someone is terrible, they may have other parts of personalities that I might like. There may be reasons why they are acting this way,” she said, “maybe it’s because they’ve been hurt before. ” She learned this phrase at an orientation organized by the Center for Leadership and Service in UGA.

12. The worst class Brianna Blackman encountered was a required Marine Science course she was initially eager to take, but soon the class took a turn for the worst. The course largely focused on water and mapping its flow around the world. Blackman claims she could never stay awake in the class and was only fully conscious during one of the projects.

Kelcey Caulder, 21, was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, but moved to Georgia at age 10. In Lumberton, she grew up in her grandmother’s house near the beach, and spent a lot of time on the sand and in the surf. She still considers her grandmother’s house to be “home” and makes an effort to visit as often as she can.

Despite her love of the beach and Tar Heels basketball, Kelcey made the decision not to move back to North Carolina following high school. Instead, she opted to attend Reinhardt University, a small private college in the Canton area, where she hoped to obtain a degree in Public Relations. It was at Reinhardt that Kelcey’s love for journalism was found and fostered into something all-consuming. She joined the college’s student newspaper, The Hiltonian, and spent many late nights fighting with her best friend and co-editor, Meagan Hurley, about which stories should run on A1. During her sophomore year, Kelcey decided that while she loved Reinhardt and the community, she was not getting the best preparation for her career. The college only offered two courses in Journalism and she was no longer satisfied with the idea of getting a PR degree. So, with the hope of learning from and among the best and brightest, Kelcey transferred to the University of Georgia. Now, she hopes to have a career in digital or print political reporting.

Kelcey spent the majority of this past summer on Baxter Street in Athens, working for The Red & Black as the newspaper’s Digital Producer. When she wasn’t busy embedding tweets and creating visually appealing online pieces, however, she did manage to take a mini-vacation to New York City to visit one of her oldest and closest friends, Cameron Stewart.  The two romped about the city, enjoying deliciously intoxicating desserts at TipsyScoop, an ice cream shop on Park Avenue that specializes in alcoholic yummies during the day and watching Broadway shows in the evenings.  One of her favorite memories of this trip was having the opportunity to meet (re: stalk) Lin-Manuel Miranda outside of the Richard Rodgers Theatre. He signed her copy of the Hamilton soundtrack and thanked her for her over-the-top fangirling. Unfortunately, he was not so impressed as to provide tickets for the show.

When conducting interviews, Kelcey prefers to use a recorder. This ensures that she can report her subjects’ words exactly as they spoke them, and the audio from these interviews can, with permission from subjects, be used to create interesting audio elements for stories.

Kelcey’s favorite written works to date were several pieces that she wrote during her time as an intern at the Student Press Law Center in Washington, DC. These pieces are some of her favorites because they allowed her to mix advocacy and journalism to help ensure that student voices continue to be heard across the nation.

As a journalist, Kelcey firmly believes that reading well leads to writing well. Her favorite book is a popular classic among millennials: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling, her favorite author. She adores this book because she feels as though she grew up alongside the characters and because it, more so than any of the other installments in the Potter series, is the most interesting and action-packed. In her opinion, the stories included in this and the other books in the series are good reads because they teach useful and inspiring lessons about friendship, bravery and the dangers of discrimination. Kelcey admires Rowling’s other works for similar reasons and admires her as a person because of her advocacy for institutionalized children.

The most meaningful advice that Kelcey has ever received she was given to her by her mentor and and high school dance team coach, Melinda Kinsey. Melinda instructed Kelcey to “live a life worth writing about” and to stop worrying so much about always pleasing others. Kinsey fully believed, and encouraged Kelcey to believe, that while considering others matters, lives are meant to be lived by the people that they belong to—and not necessarily to please the people that they don’t. For Kelcey, who truly dislikes making decisions for fear of letting others down, this lesson has proven vital in making many difficult choices in her life.

In five years, Kelcey sees herself working in audience engagement or political reporting in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. That said, she is not looking for anything too permanent at the moment. “I want to be able to move around for the foreseeable future and not be too linked to one particular job or area,” said Caulder.

Audience engagement, Kelcey’s preferred job of choice for the next several years, is a relatively new addition to the journalism field. According to her, it is a very important and growing area that uses many of the skills students at Grady College develop through the New Media Institute. Likely tasks include working with reporters and sections to find opportunities to develop readership, usually by integrating social platforms into newsrooms and creating branded content for publications, particularly for live events.

In December, Kelcey will finally walk under the Arch as a fully-grown Bulldog and she couldn’t be more excited. While she is sad to know that Saturdays in Athens won’t ever be quite the same for her, she is looking forward to putting all of her hard work to use in the big city.