Author's bio:
Kaitlyn Le is a reporter for Mustang News. In her free time, she's finding new hobbies to try — currently it's DJing and ceramics.
It was difficult to speak. The cloud of words held captive found their only escape in journals, music and other forms of media growing up.
As someone who loved medicine and helping people, I majored in biochemistry at Cal Poly, thinking I’d finally find my voice. Instead, I caught myself doing work just to get by, chasing an end goal as my primary motivation.
Somehow, it’s 8 a.m. and I’m playing vocal lessons in the car on the way to my first KCPR show — probably the biggest phony to ever walk through those doors. Not a journalism major, no experience. I walked out knowing I messed up a ton, but with the adrenaline still buzzing, I had the audacity to ask for more.
After a year of tried and failed majors, I declared a new one: half journalism, half biomedical engineering, as a liberal arts and engineering studies major. You can imagine the identity crisis.
I only wound up in MMG recently, yet every person I’ve met feels like a familiar face I’ve known for years. My peers inspired and pushed me to go from audio wraps to TV and multimedia packages. They taught me the audacity to never lose faith in myself: anchoring in Swanson Studio, reporting stand-ups in the field, writing news stories in court and sitting across from strangers of all different walks of life to give others the voice and space to be heard. I fell in love with the process and found a room full of people driven by the same passions.
Just as I’ve finally found my footing, graduation is around the corner. The same girl who filled journals in silence is now ready to find her place in the world.
Between breaking news shifts and freelancing for Mustang News through my classes, it already feels like a preview of the journey ahead — as a healthcare journalist, merging my worlds in biomedicine and storytelling.
My time in Mustang News gave me the audacity to show up every day, the courage to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and the confidence to own my identity. Life, I’ve learned, meets you at your level of audacity.