New Year’s Day is the worst day of the year to move.

I was tired and still reeling from celebrations of the night before. It was freezing. Most businesses were closed, and most people seemed closed for business, too. Anyone with good sense was still in bed as I packed my car to move out of my parents’ house in Grand Forks for the first time.

Ahead of me was an official-sounding internship at the State Capitol in Bismarck. I’d be covering the Legislature as a reporter for the NDNA, an internship I had applied for on a whim at the suggestion of an old professor.

I had never reported or written for the news. I had no desire to go into journalism. Too much drama and too little pay, I thought. I wanted to get into advertising after watching Mad Men.

But what the heck. I was sick of school; I had just wrapped up a dreadful fall semester at UND and I was tired of Grand Forks. I yearned for a change of scenery.

Covering the legislature is a bit like visiting another country.

You’ve got to learn the lingo. What’s a political subdivision?

You’ve got to know the rules and procedures. Mr. Speaker, may we be on the 11th order?

You try not to offend anyone. Excuse me, Mr. Smith? I mean, Rep. Smith – Oh, shoot…I mean Senator. (Pause.) My apologies.

But soon enough, it all felt normal and I became part of the procession of people who make our state function.

As the session progressed and I interacted with more lawmakers and state officials, I discovered that these people I had only previously seen on TV and in the newspapers are not much different than I am. Some are fun and easy to talk to, while others can be prickly and hard to speak to.

It wasn’t until these last four months writing weekly stories for the NDNA that I discovered that I had blown off the idea of being a journalist without giving it due diligence. As it turns out, journalism is the perfect gig for me. When I was younger, my parents banned the words “how come…?” because I used to ask too many questions. Now I can ask as many questions as I want, and it’s fine because it’s my job.

The AP reporter at the Capitol has a cartoon on his bulletin board. It shows a blindfolded reporter throwing a dart at a wall, which says, “Today I am an expert in:” and a variety of topics underneath. That’s what I love about journalism. It’s your job to find out everything humanly possible about a certain issue, problem or current event, then write to inform others about it. It combines my two favorite things to do: learning and telling people about the stuff I’ve learned.

I learned more than I ever thought I would this session, and about a lot of random stuff too. I learned about a behavioral health crisis in schools. I learned about rural grocery stores. I learned about the deliciousness of kuchen, a pastry that somehow had escaped my tongue for the past 22 years. I learned about the skill-no, the craft of journalism, through a mentor that another reporter had called “the best editor in the state.”

Through journalism, I get to keep learning every single day. And I even get a little money to do it.