Amy Tennery concedes hers was not the typical high school crush. The object of her affections: the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
“Some girls were in love with Justin Timberlake,” Tennery said. “I was in love with the journalism school.”
Tennery, 23, grew up in Gaithersburg, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. As a child, horses were her passion; she once rode in the Washington International Horse Show, a world-renowned equestrian competition.
But the sport could be grueling. Practice would consume several hours every day; often she didn’t look at her school work until 9 p.m. “It was really demanding,” Tennery recalled. “Sometimes you just burn out.”
Tennery found a new passion at Holton-Arms, a girls prep school in Bethesda, Md. Her sister, two years older, worked for the school newspaper, and introduced Tennery to the craft. She was instantly hooked and began researching journalism schools.
At Scripps College, a small, women’s college outside of Los Angeles, Tennery served as the editor of the student newspaper. She also wrote for the Claremont Courier, a local printed twice-weekly, and scored
internships at Ms. Magazine and Washingtonpost.com. The jobs introduced her to kind of journalism that most appeals to her: reporting and writing about politics, culture and how the two sometimes intersect.
Tennery said her aspiration to attend Columbia never wavered. She was drawn by its reputation and its location. “I think that New York is the world’s greatest place to do what we’re doing,” she said.
The year had an inauspicious start: During a jaunt to Costa Rica with her boyfriend, Tennery picked up a virus that sidelined her for much of her first week on campus. Still, she’s thrilled to be living her dream and confident she’ll end the year feeling “that I’m sort of ahead of the pack.”
