Welcome!

Hi! My name is Alexandra Rivera, but you can call me Alex for short. I'm a senior in the Telecommunications News track here at UF with a minor in Family, Youth, and Community Sciences. I absolutely love everything about journalism. For me, journalism is more than a job. It's more than working long hours in a newsroom for little compensation, more than crazy deadlines, computer crashes, and a declining market. To me, journalism is telling stories, making people's voices heard, and putting a face to the many problems that we hear about in today's world.

My journalistic career started in the sixth grade. I worked on my middle school's newspaper as a writer, and when I entered high school I became the first and only freshman to join my high school's newspaper staff (it was solely an upperclassman course at the time), breaking the barriers for younger writers who wanted to come into the class but were unable to.

Since then, everything has kind of snowballed into where I am today. I worked as a freelance writer outside of school, working for numerous outlets covering entertainment media such as movie reviews and local bands. I was a writer for the South Florida SunSentinel's youth newspaper, TeenLink. I also attended summer programs both at UF and the University of Miami. My senior year of high school, I was a recipient of the Palm Beach Post's Pathfinder Award in Journalism, one of, if not the most, coveted awards in high school academics for Palm Beach County.

Here at UF, I've written and worked for The Independent Florida Alligator, The Florida Odyssey, WUFT-FM, and WCJB-TV20 News. Currently, I'm interning for The Ilene Silverman Show as a production intern. If you want to learn more about me or see some of my work, you can head over to my website, alexandramrivera.wordpress.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at @a_michelle914. There are also links to the aforementioned located on the sidebars of this blog.

On a more personal note, I'm from Deerfield Beach, Florida, a town about 15 minutes south of Boca Raton and an hour north of Miami. I'm a full-blooded Hispanic girl (and proud!), I have two wonderful parents and a younger brother who's a pretty cool kid, and I'm the first in my family to go to college. Coming to school in Gainesville was a bit of an adjustment to me, since I moved from such a big place to a tiny little one, but I've come to love my surroundings and to learn that it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

I love family, friends, food, fashion, football, and faith. I'm a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority, my favorite color is pink, and I appreciate a good book, a good manicure, a good outfit, and a good time when appropriate. However, that isn't to say that there aren't times where I like to lay back and ride around in my car on backroads singing songs on the radio. This city girl still loves her sweet tea, a nice time on a lake or in the woods, country music, and her worn-in cowboy boots!

I'm super excited to share some things with you guys, and I really hope that you enjoy my blog!