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                        I never thought that one day I would be sitting in a class room in America, writing assignments in English as though it was something I had been doing all of my life. Even more strange is the fact that I one day hope to be able to reach thousands of people through words and report on events since nothing in my childhood suggested that this will be the place I would end up at.

            You see I was born in Tehran, the capitol of Iran and I was lucky enough to be born in an upper middle class family. Like all other third world countries the middle class in Iran is almost nonexistence and people don’t tend to stay in it for long, either sliding up or down. I started taking English classes when I was young, I had family all over the world in England, U.S, Canada etc. and speaking English seemed like a must.

            I had just finished fifth grade when my family decided to make the move to the U.S; unlike more glamorous immigration stories mine falls on the more boring side, my dad got job opportunities and with my sister and I getting older and the inequalities facing women in Iran not improving, not to mention the family already in the U.S there wasn't many reasons why we should not go. So, two month later we got on a plane and made the 13 hour flight to DC and the rest well is history.

 I’ll spare you the story of the flight itself and the five hour layover, not to mention the embarrassing stories of my stumbles the first year or so, as I tried to immerse myself into American culture and instead I rather share what captured my attention in terms of Journalism.

 “You can’t be Middle Eastern and not be political” one girl from Bangladesh said to me when I asked her why she was interested in our government project, when I had first arrived. I wasn't quite sure what she meant, until then I had not considered myself to be political but, remembering  many unanswered questions which my parents had only half answered saying I was too young to understand I had to pause and take a look back. I realized that at first, when I was younger I didn't understand, I didn't understand why my mom and aunts had to cover their hair, why  the guy who sold us the Britney Spears and Beyonce CD stored it in fake books or why there seemed a sense of discontent within the people.

My parent’s answers did not sate my curiosity however; at the time no one seemed to have a direct answer to these questions, at least not one they wanted to share with me. In Iran no one trusted the news broadcast on regular TV and the odd time Iran was shown in the news on the satellite TV in Channels like CNN or BBC the pictures showed places I had never seen before, making me doubt if they were showing the right country and the Newspapers were no better. The media was no help and that was my biggest frustration since there always seemed so much news circulating through the word of mouth.

 Voicing my own frustration revealed that frustration and anger are available in abundance, about different issues and in different forms depending the country, but, there is plenty to go around and they both lead to an over whelming amount of blame. It was through words exchanged at parties and conversations with peers and teachers that I have learnt about the blame that is being handed out on every corner and realizing that no one is pardoned.           

My spark of interest in Journalism was as unexpected as my move to the US but I truly believe that by informing people of the world around us we can alleviate some of the frustration and with it some of the blame and reveal some of the wrong in this world.