ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is my last-ditch effort to make my dreams come true.
Born in Nashville, TN, to an art professor and a dentist, I took after my father and struggled to grasp the concepts of math and science. However, unlike my father, I expressed my thoughts and opinions through pen and paper rather than putting acrylic on canvas.
As a child, whenever the Dunson family went on vacation, I would write something similar to a game story about everything that had happened from my point of view. It was something that I did for fun, not knowing that I was sowing the seeds for my biggest passion.
My father says that he always saw that I had the skillset, but trials and tribulations from that early passion made my hope waver. Both of my parents attended Tennessee State University, where they miraculously met for the first time, even though they were born less than 10 miles apart from each other in Dayton, Ohio, in 1970.
I grew up hearing the stories about the place where they fell in love, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. As I now look back on it, following my parents’ passion with youthful exuberance may not have been the road I needed to follow.
I truly love my HBCU, and I will never forget any of the experiences or people that I met there, but one thing I cannot say about my university is that it gave me the biggest launching pad to start my career after my graduation in 2023.
Once I walked across the stage, I entered the real world with less experience and guidance than a lot of my peers. I was truly blessed to be accepted into an internship with a black-owned news website in Atlanta, Ga. I worked my way up to being hired as a full-time staff writer. In my mind, I had made it to the big leagues.
But I quickly learned that my big boy job would just be a stepping stone. While at the Atlanta Black Star, I was told to write aggregate stories on issues that would usually populate places like TheShadeRoom and Lipstick Alley.
I understand that there is an audience for that, but I begged my employers to utilize my skills to engage our sports readers. In turn, after five months with the company, they restructured and I, as well as many others, was let go two weeks before Christmas.
My former professor and mentor, Erik Werner, told me that the experience was one that many writers go through, but for me, it was a gunshot wound to the chest. I believed that my experience at The Atlanta Black Star, plus coming from an HBCU, would not be enough to land another job, and for over a year, that notion was proven to be correct.
After months of applying to other writing positions while working at Target, I finally decided to go back to college to get my master’s degree. I have always followed paths that felt somewhat predetermined because I love the security of knowing someone else has done it before me and made it through.
While at Tennessee State, Professor Werner told me to watch a summit on Black Journalists that was held at the First Amendment Forum in the Walter Cronkite building. I had always dreamed of being a trusted voice in sports media, and seeing people who looked like me speak on that stage stuck with me.
So when I began applying for graduate school, Arizona State was a no-brainer because I had already “seen myself” there. It may be a last-ditch effort, but in a way, everything I have done has led me to this exact point, so maybe, just maybe, it was all meant to be.
