Unlike most people, I’ve already had my dream job.
Being a journalist was what I wanted to do ever since I wrote for my high school newspaper.
My first interview — with then-astronaut “candidate” Dr. Mae Jemison, an alum of my Chicago high school — put me in the room with a history maker. I liked meeting the medical doctor who’d become the first African-American woman to travel into space, and I loved being one of the budding journalists to tell her story.
Since that time, my passion for news took me to places with interesting people I would never have known were it not for journalism. It was my dream, and I lived it for two decades.
To day, though I (sometimes) miss the pressures and priorities of a daily newsroom, I’m starting to dream of a new career path.
This road will — hopefully — take me to the museum.
Any museum.
As an ardent supporter of cultural institutions since my youth, my career (and personal) travels allowed me to visit some of the world’s greatest museums, including The Louvre in Paris, Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence and the Cairo Museum. Not to mention spending my high school and college days in Chicago and Washington, D.C., visiting iconic spaces at the Field Museum, Art Institute of Chicago and at most of the capital city’s Smithsonian Institution sites.
What captivates me there, I now realize, is what attracted me to journalism: storytelling.
And if museums are looking for strong storytellers who can also maximize innovative tools for sharing stories in new ways, I’ve found my new calling.
Smithsonian 3D, for example, would provide an extraordinary opportunity to marry my passions, my skills and my growing understanding of reality-capture storytelling in a career that could be as fulfilling as hobnobbing in high school with astronauts. My thirst for firsts could serve me well in 3D storytelling — and museums may well be the place of new dreams for me.
CMSU Reflections 