From There to Here

You’ve reached the blog of Bill Yelenak.

I was born in Connecticut in November 1982, and until I left to go to college at Boston University in August of 2000, I lived in Southington all my life. Southington is a large town or a small city, but the locals still like to refer to it as a town. To me, it was always strange how a “town” could have five exits off Interstate 84 (Hartford has about eight, for comparison’s sake), but it was a great place to grow up.

I attended public schools there for 13 years, including John F. Kennedy Middle School (didn’t every town have one?) and Southington High School, one of the largest high schools in the state. During my early years, while in elementary school, I created our own school newspaper — the Koala News, as it was so named. I, of course, made myself the editor and had a fun time publishing about five or six issues a year on 8.5 x 11 paper. Some classmates wrote poems for the paper and others drew pictures, etc. While it was hardly what an actual news publication should be like, it was fun work for a 10 year old and it gave me something to keep myself busy.

It was as early as elementary school, when I was creating my own newspaper and interviewing sources, that I got bit by the news bug. Around the same time, I also saw “ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN,” which was quite a movie during my formative years. I decided, right then and there, that I wanted to be a reporter. I loved writing, and I figured reporting would be the right career for me.

For some reason, I never became involved with the newspaper at my middle school. I’m not really sure what I did during those two years (they moved the sixth graders up with us and moved the ninth grade to the high school the same year I got there. Before we were there it was K-6, 7-9, 10-12, but our first year at the middle school, they changed it to K-5, 6-8, 9-12 — hence only spending two years there), but I know they were the most awkward years I had growing up. I had a growth spurt and really shot up heightwise, but my weight hadn’t caught up and I had a really lanky, really awkward looking frame. If only those days could be here again!

I got my first and last detention for fighting in the eighth grade. Some guy pushed me in the hallway. I walked right into homeroom and pushed him out of his seat and onto the floor in the middle of the entire class. Then we both went to the assistant principal, where I got chewed out and given detention. It was worth it thought. Definitely would do the same thing again today even knowing what would happen.

All throughout high school, I had a great core group of friends and involved myself with a lot of extracurricular activites at Southington High, including The Emblem, the newspaper and The Chronicle, our yearbook. I also hung out around the Key Club for a while (mostly because the girl(s) I dated throughout high school were involved with it) and Spanish Club/Latin Club/etc. I probably got credit for being in quite a few of the clubs I never actually joined. One year, a friend and I attempted to get in as many yearbook photos as we could. They’d take them during class, so we heard “German Club” or “Polish Club,” and we thought they’d be fun. So we got our pictures taken with the club, missed some class time and never really got to a meeting… regardless, it was well worth it.

I took over as managing editor of The Emblem my junior year and was named the paper’s editor my senior year. We turned the newspaper around, made it free to all students and created a website, which lives on to this day. The paper has continued to improve, and I think the school has done a great job of keeping it going. It’s always a hard thing to do, but I have a lot of respect for the students who do it since I know how much work goes into it. I also got some horrible news my senior year — I missed the cut to be in the top 25 percent of my high school graduating class. My first-choice college, Boston University, hardly accepted anyone who didn’t graduate in the top 25 percent. In 2007, more than 87 percent graduated in the top 25 percent of their class. Lucky for me, I had decent SAT scores and very good extracurriculars — both of which, I believe, helped me get into the school.

BU was nothing short of amazing. I spent four amazing years there, met a ton of cool people and had more fun than I ever could of imagined. During Spring 2003, I got to “study abroad” (they called it that, I swear) in Washington, DC — the four months there were absolutely incredible. For a political junkie like myself, nothing quite beats the thrill of walking around the U.S. Capitol like you own the place and hanging out in the press gallery reading a newspaper next to some of the most well respected journalists in the world. It might sound kind of dorky, but for me, it was really a big thrill.

During my time at BU, I was more involved with The Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper, than anything else. I started working for the paper my freshman year, and due to the fact that the news editor happened to be in my Spanish I class, I started working in the office two to three nights a week as an assignment editor, giving out stories to other writers on the paper. After working as an assignment editor my freshman year, I slowly moved up the ranks, working as an assistant news editor and associate news editor my sophomore year. The first semester of my junior year, I took over as news editor, which is one of the most difficult — and fulfilling — things I’ve ever done in my life. The second half of my junior year I did the DC program, and I returned senior year to serve as the editor in the fall and the general business manager in the spring.

The paper helped me get a lot of experience, but more than anything else, it helped me build longlasting friendships, many of which I still have to this day. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to hang out with for 60+ hours a week at times, and being a part of the paper is something I can look back on with absolutely no regrets.

I graduated from Boston University in May of 2004 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Print Journalism from Boston University and a Blue Chip Award of Excellence from the College of Communication. I had a hard time deciding between two jobs when I got out of school, and made a decision that has probably impacted everything in my life up to this point and probably will have an effect on anything I do in the future as well. I flew down to Fort Myers, FL, and interviewed at the Ft. Myers News Press to be a copy editor.

I spent three days there, learning about the newsroom and trying out on the copy desk before flying home. When I flew home, I got a call from the Record-Journal where I had interned for the past two summers and worked part-time during winter breaks, and they offered me a job covering Wallingford Town Hall. I spent a ton of time in Wallingford, knew the area well and still had a lot of friends in Boston. Rather than move to Ft. Myers where I knew absolutely no one, I decided to stay in Connecticut, live at home for a few months and work at the Record-Journal.

Sooner rather than later, I moved to Meriden and lived in a one-bedroom apartment while working at the RJ. Life was pretty easy and pretty comfortable, and in January 2005, I started covering Meriden City Hall. When the paper scrapped a full-time reporter at the Capitol, I got to cover a ton of state stories as well. I started to like politics so much that I decided I’d rather be working for a political campaign than reporting on one for the election cycle in 2006. Luckily, I got a job working on the Christy Mihos for Governor campaign as the communications analyst.

The Mihos campaign ended in November, and as anyone could probably figure out, Mihos didn’t win. I moved on, took some time off, went to Ft. Myers for vacation and started applying for jobs. By the middle of January, I was back working in an office for the Providers’ Council in Boston as the Communications and Development Manager. I’ve been at the job since January, and it’s absolutely amazing. A lot of good people, it’s for a good cause and at the end of the day, I can go home always feeling pretty good about myself — something that didn’t always happen when I was a reporter or a political consultant.

As far as what the future holds, I’m not sure. I’d like to do some freelance writing and I’d definitely love to keep playing poker, one of my hobbies that I always wish I could turn into a career. Also, screenwriting has been a hobby, although I’m not really sure how one would go into that. I also watch a lot of TV (thank you, TiVo), so if someone knows of a television critic job, I’m all over it.