Devin Kelly: The story is yours to tell

I’m staring at a white board in the Kerckhoff Hall conference room where I’ve spent countless hours in Daily Bruin budget meetings.

Inside a sketch of a page, someone has written four words in brown dry erase marker.

“This is your story.”

It is, isn’t it?

At the Daily Bruin, we wrangle stories like unbroken horses, piecing together quotes and facts and perspectives.

I’ve written them, assigned them, edited them, produced them online.

They are the ones that really stick with you.

Of basketball players in Cameroon.

Of a schoolteacher in Japan when the tsunami hit.

Of a terminally ill professor determined to continue teaching.

Of an adventurous math student fighting with Libyan rebels.

We tell the small stories, of a keyboard transported on a skateboard to a residence hall lounge from an attic in Schoenberg Hall.

We tell the large ones, of multimillion dollar budget cuts to a university system trying to figure out how to slow the pace of tuition hikes.

We seek out the humanity in studies, reports, numbers.

These stories are yours. They’re not for me, or about me. They’re for you.

I’m a journalist but I’m first and foremost a storyteller. I knew it at age 7, with absolute clarity, winning first prize in a young author’s competition in Sacramento, Calif.

I pivoted into journalism at age 17, falling into the rhythm and pace of local news reporting, the profession already running in the veins of my family.

That’s my story – here at UCLA, it’s a desk at the Daily Bruin, it’s the hunt for the perfect hamburger, it’s that one hike in the Pacific Palisades that takes your breath away.

It’s 8-clapping at the football game until your hands hurt.

It’s the quote from a professor you’ll never forget, about how you want to change the world, but it’s the world that changes you.

It’s friends who tell you what you need to hear.

It’s having a dream, and waking up one day to realize it’s coming true.

But I’m the journalist, and this is your story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Tell it with all your heart.

Kelly was online managing editor from 2012-2013, news editor from 2011-2012, assistant news editor in 2011 and a news contributor from 2010-2011.

Published by Devin Kelly

Devin Kelly is the online managing editor of the Daily Bruin. Email her at dkelly@media.ucla.edu.

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