Rachel Kuntz

Two years ago, if you said I would be sitting at a desk interning at the Powell Tribune for a semester, I’d say you’re nuts. But here I am.

Growing up, life was chaotic yet stationary, a bipolar contradiction that was and still is my life. I grew to discover what I disliked and what I didn’t mind, but it seemed like there wasn’t anything that truly popped out at me.

In the past, it seemed like nothing truly clicked for me, so I just rolled with the punches, completing the required classes and kept on moving.

As I entered high school, I was pretty lost — I didn’t want to choose something I didn’t like. But that’s the epitome of life.

And it was a blur. I took some risks, enrolled in different electives, took some college classes and branched outside of my comfort zone. Life’s twists and turns took me through the highs and lows and with all the chaos in between, it landed me into the field of journalism.

In these past two years, I’ve been the editor of The Prowl for a year, I’ve represented Wyoming at two different nationwide conferences and one of my stories was awarded Best of SNO, a nationwide competition for all the online newspapers who use the SNO site.

It’s crazy what life does to you before you’re able to stop and think.

With that, landing an internship at my local newspaper was already too high for me to reach, which isn’t a short joke, either.

I enjoy journalism, with all the different angles, the shrinking comfort zone box that’s in my distant memory and the amount of times I have to introduce myself to ask anyone about their business for The Prowl. I enjoy knowing more about the current events or the occasional “Florida man …” stories to joke about with the staff.

I’ve grown up looking for some reassurance and to find something I’m truly passionate about — something I strive to learn, along with what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and what I didn’t want to do. Now, I’m in a professional newsroom, typing away like my life depends on it and gaining some skills and new relationships along the way.

Thinking about the future doesn’t seem so scary now, especially when I don’t have to focus so much on how to calculate the mass of Rubidium or know the medical term for the back of your head (occipital, if you didn’t already know).

(Rachel Kuntz, a Powell High School senior, is interning at the Tribune for the fall semester.)