FAIRHOPE, Alabama—I grew up in a small town in Southern Mississippi of about 3,000 people. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted to get out. For me, the horizon didn’t end at the city limit sign, unlike many of my classmates. All I wanted was to go and see the world. Then I just had to figure out the best way to make that happen. After a two-year stint at the local community college, I decided the first step to getting away from that small town was to attend college in a different state. The University of South Alabama won for being the most economical university that offered me a scholarship.

At South Alabama, I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had so many interests that I wanted to do a little bit of everything. I declared quite a few majors, from veterinary medicine to English literature. Finally I decided a degree in journalism would be perfect for me. I would be able to continue learning and writing about the range of topics I found interesting. I went to see my journalism advisor who told me flat out, “Don’t do this.” The jobs are few and the pay is lean, she said. My mom wasn’t happy about the idea that her only child would be a starving writer either. I insisted though and soon my final semester of college was upon me. One of my teachers suggested doing an internship for my final class and I was lucky enough to be chosen for The Fairhope Courier position.

My first assignment for The Fairhope Courier was an Education Advisory Committee meeting. As I walked up to the building where the meeting was held, there was a group of committee members mulling about outside. I was so nervous. This was my first real journalistic outing, the first of many, many meetings I would cover over the next 10 weeks. I’m sure the people at that meeting were confused as to who I was and what I was doing there, but I was too shy to introduce myself until after the meeting. Everyone at that meeting was so nice though that I wasn’t as nervous at the next meeting. With every meeting and event I attended, every article I wrote, I gained more and more confidence.

Soon I was getting sporadic phone calls and emails from citizens saying they enjoyed or appreciated my articles. That was a very humbling experience because I wasn’t sure anyone was even reading my articles, let alone enjoying them. I knew these people reading the newspaper. I had worked in the Fairhope area off and on for three years prior to this internship as a waitress and bartender, first at Ruby Tuesday’s, then at Rosie’s Grill, and most recently at the short-lived Avanti Restaurant in the old Gambino’s building. I made friends here in Fairhope and oddly enough, the Eastern Shore had found a special place in my heart. I guess you could say I left one small town for a slightly larger small town, but I would say that I found a home here.

As my time at the Fairhope Courier draws to a close I want to let the citizens of this great town know how much I have enjoyed working with them and for them. I have enjoyed digging into the small town gossip, the culture and most of all the politics. Let me just say the politics in Fairhope have made me run the full range of emotions, from love to hate, happiness to anger, and so on. I’ve laughed, cried and smiled through everything with you and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it.

I won’t be going far though Fairhope. I am happy to report I have been offered a job as a reporter for our sister newspaper The Bulletin in Daphne and Spanish Fort, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. I’m glad I can still call the Eastern Shore my home.

Editor’s Note: Kaylea Saucier’s internship was funded by a grant from the Alabama Press Association Journalism Foundation, for which we are grateful. In addition to interning for The Fairhope Courier this summer, Kaylea also graduated from the University of South Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in communication, with an emphasis on journalism. Just as she was finishing this article, she was offered a staff writer position with The Bulletin, where she started Sept. 4. We are pleased to publish Kaylea’s article in The Courier and look forward to her Eastern Shore stories for The Bulletin appearing in our pages from time to time.