Meet the Intern: Emma Rausch

Introducing...
Emma Rausch, Editorial Intern 

I was once told that the best way to live a successful, happy life is by becoming a worldly person. At the time I was given this advice, I was a freshman in college and on my fourth home since third grade (and it wouldn’t be my last). Since I was little, my dad has had a terrible case of wanderlust, moving my family around the country every four years or so. In total, I’ve lived in nine different cities, including Nashville, TN and Andover, MA. Currently, I’m enjoying the coastal lifestyle in a small apartment just off the shore of Bradley Beach, NJ. So when the aforementioned tip came my way, I knew exactly what it meant—and I was grateful for my dad’s wanderlust, as I know it’s helped me develop into an experienced and knowledgeable woman.

When you travel or move as much as I have, you meet people. Not people as in a population or group, but people in the singular sense—individuals who are unique in our population of six billion, all of whom are living a different story. When you’re a journalist, it seems like you’re always collecting these biographies and storing them in a mental library, even if your next article isn’t about the man you just met on the bus or the woman who chatted with you in the coffee shop. Sometimes these men and women will share memories that make you tear up with laughter and other times you have to clench your jaw tight and try not to cry. I became a journalist because I have a love for listening to stories and the ability to put them on paper, something I developed while growing up around my mother and the old storytellers of Indiana. For example, my grandmother loved to tell me stories about her childhood, the most memorable being the time she was hit with a broken car door and had to ride a donkey to the local hospital.

The Hoosier state has and always will be where I consider home. Although I moved quite a bit, most of my childhood and teen years were spent somewhere in Indiana. My mom graduated from Purdue while my dad is an Indiana University alumnus. Obviously, growing up we were a house divided, but I had always “known” I would go to Purdue to pursue some kind of degree in engineering. Or so I thought.

After a reluctant move to Owensville, a southern Indiana town where the closest thing to an ocean was the vast, wide sea of corn, and where I had some minor trouble fitting in with the local kids, I was recruited by my high school English teacher to join an elite team that met every third period to produce the school’s monthly newspaper. While the newspaper team was considered a class by the school’s standards, I always felt like it was anything but. As part of the group, you were expected to be professional and on time with your stories and page designs. We worked with the latest Adobe Creative Suite software and even worked on Mac computers, which seemed almost out of place in a small, country high school.

I worked for three years as a staff reporter on that newspaper before I was promoted to the Arts and Entertainments Editor and took charge of the main layout design in my senior year. I felt like I was really in my element working on the paper, but still planned on pursuing my 18-year goal of some kind of engineering degree. Then one day, out of the blue, my English teacher approached me and said, “You know, you would be a really great journalist.” And it was like a light bulb turned on above my head. I had never once considered a career in journalism, but once I did I couldn’t stop, and I knew it was my calling.

My mom called me a traitor when I accepted Indiana University with plans to enroll in its School of Journalism. She was also worried that I would fail to succeed like so many others have before me. So while she was reluctant to support me at first, she soon began to push me. She pushed me into accepting my first internship with Evansville’s local PBS station, WNIN, and then she pushed me again to apply for a position with ESPN and ESPN U. When I was applying for jobs and internships after I graduated this past May, she encouraged me to apply to NYMetroParents even though I didn’t believe I would be taken on as an intern. I undoubtedly wouldn’t be where I am today without her always telling me to have confidence in myself and my work as well as to be willing to move in order to pursue a better future. I aspire to be owner, or at least Editor-in-Chief of a magazine company and to, eventually, stop having to move. No matter what I do, though, I plan to lead a worldly life, and maybe explore a bit of my own wanderlust as well.

Also see: Meet the NYMetroParents Editorial Team