I’m finishing up my junior year at Syracuse University, where I study magazine journalism and chemistry. I used to want to be an orthodontist, but I realized in high school that going to orthodontic school would mean seven years of highly focused education, while going into journalism would mean a lifetime of learning about anything I wanted. I’ve interned at the Newark Star-Ledger doing graphics and page design and covered local government as a stringer for the Easton (Pa.) Express-Times. I also spent two years as a news editor and design editor at my college paper, the Daily Orange. I spent spring 2007 studying in London (where I lived in a neighborhood with more signs in Arabic than English) and traveling in Europe. During this time, I realized that unless I get a job working the science section at a newspaper, the most use I’ll get out of three years of advanced chemistry labs will be helping my friends figure out how to cook using the centigrade scale and milliliters. I collected newspapers and maps from every city I visited, and (much to my roommate’s horror) plan to make frames for them and call it the art for our living room next year.

Katie Carrera
Ohio University
Reporter, Sports

I grew up in Greensburg, Pa., a quintessential suburban town roughly half an hour east of Pittsburgh where my chemical engineer parents passed on a knack for problem solving and a love of sports. I started writing sports in high school and continued as a freshman in college at the Post, Ohio University’s independent, student-run newspaper. This year, as a junior, I was sports editor as the following news surfaced: 19 Ohio football players were arrested in six months and received minimal punishment from their coach; the Ohio athletic department opted to cut four sports; and a soccer player fell five stories to her death while on spring break. I covered the Orioles, the Ravens and motocrosser Travis Pastrana during my first internship last summer as a sports reporter at The Baltimore Sun. While I enjoy all sports, hockey is by far my favorite. I drink excessive amounts of coffee, too, even in the summer.

Virgil Dickson
DePaul University
Reporter, Prince George’s County Bureau

“Are you writing a book or something?” As a child in Louisville, this was a question I heard a lot. I had no problem getting all up in people's business. When I realized I could make a career out of it in middle school, I knew my destiny was set. After moving to Chicago, I joined the staff of the Depaulia, my college newspaper. That summer I got my first professional journalism gig in Upstate New York, where I worked at singer Mariah Carey’s summer camp as a teacher’s assistant in the journalism courses. Two internships followed next summer, one as a reporter at the weekly Chicago Journal and the other in the billing office of the Chicago Tribune. It was important for me to experience both sides of the industry. My 2006 internships were at the Austin-American Statesman as a Chips Quinn Scholar and at the Daily Herald, the third-largest newspaper in the Chicago market. At the beginning of the year I returned to the Chicago Tribune to intern at its youth tabloid publication, the RedEye. In February 2007 I won an award for investigative reporting from the Illinois College Press Association. I will receive a bachelor of arts degree from DePaul University in June.

Omar Fekeiki
University of California at Berkeley
Reporter, City Desk

I was born and raised in a Baghdad family that appreciated and practiced writing, but I never thought I’d become a journalist because I lived under a dictatorship. To me, it was a taboo profession because the only thing journalists did under the regime of Saddam Hussein was to praise the government and lie to the people. It was rare that I read any article in an Iraqi newspaper that depicted the real life and difficulties Iraqis had to endure. In April 2003, I met with The Post’s Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who offered me a job as a translator. I took it because I was very curious. I had studied English literature for five years in college, but I never had the chance to speak to a native speaker until that day. As the days passed, I became more interested in journalism. I witnessed how stories were written based on information from sources, and that excited me. I came to realize that journalism was the way I could help Iraq. I started to report stories by myself, and I eventually started to write my own stories. My goal doesn’t stop here. My ultimate desire is not to be a reporter. I want to start a newspaper in Iraq, where I will apply what I have learned from years of working for The Post. The way to achieve this goal is to learn about journalism in the United States, both in the classroom and in practice. That was why I applied to the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, where I am studying now, and that is why I am looking forward to working for The Post in Washington this summer. I plan to return to Iraq after I graduate in August 2008.

Gregory Finley
California State University at Chico
Copy Editor, Financial

I didn’t have much editing experience last year but really wanted an internship. One of my professors told me I should make editing marks on an article published on the Web site of the Modesto Bee, an 87,000-circulation daily in California, and enclose the scribbled printout with my application for an internship. The technique landed me the gig and probably helped me get here as well. Assuming I passed all my classes this semester, I will have earned my bachelor’s degree in journalism after three years of college. I spent all six semesters working in various capacities for The Orion, my student newspaper. Most recently, I was the managing editor. I grew up in east San Diego County and decided to come to Chico State because it was the second-farthest state school from home, and it had a good journalism program. I am coming to the The Post through the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.

Keith Hautala
University of Kentucky
Copy Editor, Foreign

My first newspaper jobs were delivering the Martinez (Calif.) News-Gazette and, later, the Contra Costa Times. From there my career took a scenic detour. I studied acting and film at a community college for a couple of years, supporting myself with restaurant work and other menial employment. Seeking greater fortune, I moved to Chicago, where I worked office jobs and studied improv with the Players Workshop of the Second City. I met my wife and followed her home to Lexington, Ky. There, we opened a coffeehouse, which was a success in nearly every way — except financially. We gave up after two years. I took a job at the University of Kentucky so I could take a few classes for free. I ended up falling in love with journalism. For the past two years, I’ve worked part-time as a copy editor for the Lexington Herald-Leader while finishing a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in mass communication. I also teach freshman college composition. When I’m not working, I make my own bagels, play with my three dogs, read (mostly nonfiction) and watch way more television than I should. Despite 20 years of trying, I am unable to play the guitar.

Monica Hesse
Johns Hopkins University
Reporter, Style

Last week, I attended a leather conference with a group of dominatrixes. They were nice girls, showing me the proper way to hold a flogger and the difference between American and English styles of whipping. A gimp offered to carry my backpack. My mom was horrified, but it seems to me that if you meet a dominatrix and she invites you to hang out, you should. You should because you are curious, and because, naturally, it might turn into a story. The dominatrix experience is one of the more madcap adventures I’ve embarked on in the name of curiosity. Runners up: learning the business of alligator gutting, getting my soul saved at a Pentecostal church, celebrating Samhain with a coven of witches and only learning “skyclad” meant “naked” after the ceremony had begun. These escapades have been mostly on my free time; crazy notions that turned into articles for The Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, People, and Men’s Health. My day job for the past three years has been working as an editor at AARP the Magazine, while completing my M.A. in nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins on the side. I received a B.A. from Bryn Mawr in 2003. I’ve written for the Washingtonian and DC Style, and was the interim features editor for OnTap in 2006.

Jenna Johnson
University of Nebraska
Reporter, Metro

I grew up in a newspaper family, which means that at an early age I vowed I would never become a journalist. It just seemed like too many late nights, too many angry phone calls, too many weird co-workers and definitely not enough pay. I just couldn’t understand why my mom (a graphic artist) and dad (a jack-of-all-newsroom-trades who spent most of his time as an editor) were so enamored with the profession. But then I joined my high school paper staff and, well, here I am. It’s been a fun ride so far – one that has taken me to the other side of the world, to three internships in the Midwest and into the amazing lives of people I would otherwise never have met. I am officially a California native but grew up in Omaha and will graduate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln this May. I started writing for the Daily Nebraskan before I even started classes and am leaving as the editor in chief. I love attempting to cook, drinking pinot noir, traveling on weekends, acrylic painting, pointy high heels and strong, dark coffee.

Alejandro Lazo
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Reporter, Financial

My mother, a strong woman, raised me. She always stressed that I should live a practical life. She never much emphasized politics, art, writing, all things I came to love. What she talked about was poverty and how important it was for her to escape it. An immigrant from Argentina, she was happy to leave a bloody mess of a nation behind for a stable life in the United States. So it was an important moment of self-declaration, years later, when I abandoned a scholarship to study biological sciences at the University of San Francisco and switched to politics. It led me where I am today. I have never really viewed my desire to be a journalist in the strict terms of having a career. Careers are boring. Journalism is a rush and always best thought of as where you are in any given moment, because that could be anywhere, and that’s exciting. Journalism for me has also always been about being a bit of an outsider, an observer. My goal is to write stories that reveal something about human nature. I love well-reported narratives, regardless of their subject. I hope to do this kind of work at The Post. I will graduate this year with a master of arts from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. It is a new degree program that offers specialties, and mine is in business and economics. I was a member of the school’s master of science class in 2006. I have worked at the daily Lodi News-Sentinel and weekly Riverdale Press, and I interned for the New York Times in Stamford, Conn., and for Newsday on Long Island.

Kendra Marr
Northwestern University
Reporter, Financial

When I arrived at Northwestern University, my entire life fit neatly into two suitcases and a box. And since I spent a good portion of my college journalism career bouncing from one city to the next, it stayed that way. I started in Evanston, Ill., where I wrote for and edited my campus newspaper, The Daily Northwestern. Then I was off to South Florida to intern as a reporter for the Miami Herald. I made my way to California, where I covered two cities and copy-edited for the Orange County Register. Then I left the land of sunshine and theme parks to return to college just in time for a snowy winter. I ate too much deep-dish pizza, explored Chicago and sat riveted through two seasons of “Lost.” Before I knew it, I was back to my San Francisco Bay area roots, writing about health for the San Jose Mercury News. Since then I’ve settled down. I’ve been investigating a possible wrongful murder conviction with the Medill Innocence Project, enjoying my senior year … and accumulating a whole lot of junk! When I graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism this June, I'll be driving to Washington with an overflowing carload of silly mementos and books I just can’t seem to abandon.