Shawn Lealos:  

I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Back when I was a kid, I took art classes but my focus was writing comic books and the art was just a way to do it. As I grew into adulthood, I started to read Stephen King and decided that is what I wanted to do. Short stories became my focus and carried on as I started college and began to work towards a business degree. I mean, I couldn't make a living writing, could I? My English professor had different thoughts. She told me that the University of Oklahoma had an accredited degree in Professional Writing in its journalism school. She told me that unlike the English creative writing classes, the Professional Writing degree would also teach me how to make a living writing. I bought it and off I went. In my first year at OU, we were told of all the opportunities that were available to us as extra-curricular activities. I decided to take an intern position at the Sooner yearbook and also took a class that let me write for the Oklahoma Daily newspaper. It was at this time that I realized if I wanted to be successful, I had to fight for everything. For the news gathering class, I was supposed to come up with ideas for stories. I was watching an OU football game and saw an interview with former Sooner great Brian Bosworth. He was talking about a foundation he had set up that gave tickets to football games to kids from the local children's hospitals and foster homes. It also gave them to inner city youth groups and children whose parents were victims in the Murrow bombing. I brought the idea to the Oklahoma Daily and they told me it was a great idea and they were going to let one of their more experienced reporters take it and run. What? I was not happy. This was my story. I didn't let it keep me down, though. I went to the yearbook and told them about the story and they told me to go ahead and write it for the yearbook. I called the Athletic Director's office and found out the phone number of Bosworth's Hollywood agent. I made the call and set up an interview with Bosworth. My phone rang one day and I did the telephone interview with Bosworth. It was my first interview ever. He was the best subject I could have hoped for and was very courteous and open with me. I went to the newspaper and asked how their reporter was doing on the story and they told me they weren't sure how to get in touch with Bosworth and were waiting until he was in town. I mentioned that I had already interviewed him and they just kind of looked at me in shock. They asked if I would be interested in writing a story for them. Yeah. I wrote the story for the yearbook and it was named the Sooner story of the year. I wrote the story for the newspaper and they saved it and made it the cover story of the game day paper, The Red Zone. It earned Honorable Mention in the State of Oklahoma's SPJ Awards Ceremony for feature writing. I a...Expand for more