By all means, I shouldn’t be here.

Not in this newsroom, not at this university and not even here now writing a reflection about my time at the University of Utah and the content I’ve produced for the Daily Utah Chronicle.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I’m from, I finished high school by the skin of my teeth and only attended classes after being institutionally blacklisted for truancy and consistently “defiant behavior.” I was also, for a short time, a member of La Cueva High School’s paper, The Edition, where I wrote impassioned opinion pieces about the student experience with very little oversight and practical application of AP style writing standards. It was a loose but prime opportunity to express myself with words instead of anger. I was kicked off of that very paper my junior year for inappropriate comments I had made on Twitter about our principal.

So, the first lesson I have for you is to pick your battles. I was bullied often by my peers and uniformly outcasted by my parents, teachers and school staff. I was as a part of a demographic of young people often condemned to a futile existence after failing to conform to the social and academic standards of school and society more broadly. The theme of ‘not fitting in’ has become just as tired and just as corny to me as the people who strive their whole lives to stack their resumes and build their social circles. Now I am here, telling you to do one thing: defy yourself, even if it means conforming in your own eyes.

I saw student media like all clubs and organizations on campus: an exclusionary herd of sheltered white kids all contributing to the silly facade of a “college experience.” An echo chamber for a limited set of ideas and values where students came together to righteously indignify one another until sliding into a comfortable career working to pay off their insurmountable student debt thinking to themselves, “Was that degree worth it?”

I was wrong though. I projected my insecurities from my tumultuous high school years onto a hardworking, impassioned and supportive group of writers and content creators. Now I feel both honored and inspired by the amazing team of writers and editors I get to work with every day at the Chronicle.

My time at the U has been very educational, but my team at the news desk may have taught me the most. The Chronicle taught me the importance of remaining defiant — to yourself and the misconceptions you may hold that keep you from growing and trying new things. In addition, how to break yourself from the shackles you locked yourself into. The Chronicle also let me write stories on whatever I wanted and allowed me to talk to and write about the people, ideas and organizations that inspired me on campus.

Now I hope to make a career in journalism doing just that. Defying myself and others while building on a foundation of empathy and intimate critical thinking.

“Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men,” Miyamoto Musashi wrote in “A Book of Five Rings.” I came across this quote after a brief (but all too common) teenage obsession with samurai. While samurai are definitely not the heroes they’re cracked up to be, those words by the 16th-century swordsman have been a source of inspiration for me to continue to break free from the confines I was quartered off to as a young person. To challenge the ideas I created of myself and be in a constant state of practice, to always remain a student, and to always defy myself.

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@JakeDuffyChrony