I have worked in the journalism business for more than seven years since graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005. I interned at The Aegis in Bel Air, where I received a Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Association award for a story I wrote about agriculture in Harford County. The Aegis later hired me as its crime reporter, a job I absolutely loved. I later was its political reporter. The latter role threw me straight into the 2006 Ehrlich-O’Malley gubernatorial campaign, which was quite an experience. During my time with The Aegis, I won numerous journalism awards. Leaving The Aegis in 2008 to come to The Gazette as a business reporter was especially difficult because I had spent my entire life in Harford County and loved the rural atmosphere. Coming to the more urban and fast-paced atmosphere of the greater Washington, D.C., region definitely took some adjustment, but I've learned how to keep pace, and it's not as if Montgomery and Prince George's counties don't have some farmland of their own. I was born in Rota, Spain, when both my parents were stationed there in the Navy, but my grandparents are Mexican. Sadly, I haven’t retained much of these ethnic cultures, as most of my Spanish language skill comes from what I learned in high school and college. But it still comes in handy every now and then.