It was about this time of year -- summertime -- about three decades ago, I had just graduated from college with a degree in a journalism and was job hunting. To tell you the truth, I hadn't a clue -- except for some vague desire to work for National Geographic some day -- about what I was going to do with my career. But a recruiter had visited campus from a brand new television news organization. Some place called Cable News Network. They had this crazy idea about 24-hour news. Although I was a writer and didn't have any television training, I was young and watched a lot of TV. The recruiter said he was hiring me, but then he got fired, and I spent a lot of time on the phone that summer trying to convince CNN to make good on his promise. Finally I wore them down. "You're persistent," they said. "When can you start?"

That's one lesson -- the one about persistence -- I plan to share with my students this fall.

For more than a decade now -- after a career in journalism and public relations (I only lasted a year at CNN, by the way) -- I have been a stay-at-home mom. My last assignment before becoming a mother had been wrangling with the federal prison system trying to get interviews with convicted murderer and Native American activist Leonard Peltier, and I had morning sickness for months. I'd be talking on the phone trying to keep from vomiting long enough to complete an interview or a negotiation for access. When my daughter arrived, I was ready for a break. And I'm grateful I had the time to get her started well in school. She's a gifted student who was reading on a high school level in early grade school, who is crazy about anime and manga, creates her own animations and occasionally gets into trouble at school because of the content of her artwork. Remind me to tell you about her depiction of "The Chop House" sometime. 

Anyway, the only problem was that by the time my daughter didn't need me at home so much anymore (except to convince her teachers that she is not a sociopath, despite the content of some of her artwork -- did I mention "The Chop House?"), and by the time I was ready to return to work, the journalism profession was ... changing. I'd taken a few education classes, with the idea in the back of my mind that I could teach and spend summers home with my daughter. But now -- just as I'm about to complete my alternative certification to teach high school journalism -- the education profession is changing, too. Make that "Changing" with a capital C.

This afternoon, I spoke on the phone for the first time with the teacher who will be my mentor during my student teaching this fall. She has two years of teaching experience and is seven months pregnant with her first child. While I just celebrated my 50th birthday, have a 10-year-old still at home, and am going back to school for the first time in decades.

My new young mentor tells me one of the final projects she will be assigning the students  this fall will be to brainstorm about the future of journalism, because they are part of the generation that will be recreating the profession. 

And as I prepare to teach these young people, I am flashing back to my first day on the job at CNN. I wasn't even on the payroll yet but had stopped by the studio to tell them I was in town. They gave me a tour of the facility, including the news room floor, where they explained that one of my jobs would be running one of two studio cameras. Live. On nationwide TV. After a quick explanation of how the camera worked and a few minutes of observation time, they asked if I thought I could do the job. I told them sure, after a little more training.

That was when someone wheeled the camera over to me, placed the controls in my hands and said, "You've had all the training you're going to get. We're going live in 1, 2, 3 ... "