Mornings on the Couch
Dudek, Katie (2009-05-19)

>>INTERVIEWER: OK, go ahead and tell me your name.
>>KATIE DUDEK: I'm--do you want first and last name?
>>INTERVIEWER: Yes.
>>KATIE DUDEK: Ok, my name is Katie Dudek.
>>INTERVIEWER: And what's your story going to be about?
>>KATIE DUDEK: Just reading and writing in general and my experience with it.
>>INTERVIEWER: Ok, excellent.  We'll go ahead and start your narrative.
>>KATIE DUDEK: Ok, well I guess where I would start is: My dad works for The Sun Times, he did when I was little, and then he worked for other newspapers, and now he is back at The Sun Times.  So he's always been really, really into journalism and the newspaper business and everything like that.  So I just remember every morning when I got up, I've always been a morning person, and I still am now in college and my friends think I'm crazy, but every morning I'd get up and I'd read the paper with him.  I didn't know, well he'd read it to me, but when I started to read, I read it with him.  And before I could read I sat there and read the comics because I thought that was really cool.  I just wanted to look like my dad, and be like my dad.  So I would just crawl over on the couch and sit next to him, and that's how I found out all the information that I did.  And so in high school, I applied to be a part of the, on the newspaper staff of my high school.  And I got that position and just fell in love with it.  I loved writing for the newspaper, I loved designing for it, just everything about it.  And we actually talk about it now because now the newspaper business is just a dying field.  Sun Times went bankrupt, so did Tribune.  Because people don't, they just sit there and they read it on the Internet, which is fine, it's a form of literacy, but it's just the nostalgia of holding a newspaper and getting that information in there.  So, I also work for the DI here, I designed for that.  And that's basically a lot of where I learned of my love for reading and writing, was through my dad.  He influenced me.  But I don't necessarily want to go into journalism just because it is a dying field, and that's really sad.  But I just have a great appreciation for it, I guess, through him.  I guess that's it, it's just the whole nostalgic thing, and I still remember every morning sitting there on the couch with him.  So it was fun.