There I was. Ten years old and a hot glue gun in hand, meticulously placing cotton clumps onto a plastic bucket. My work had to be surgically precise. With my best friend at my side, we were pouring our blood, sweat and tears into this project. 

We were going to do it. 

For Halloween, we would be cupcakes.

I’ve always needed to occupy my brain with a task and my hands would follow. One might blame it on my left-handed, artistic genes, but I know it’s more than that. When people think of Bella Broce, they think of two phrases — outgoing and out-of-the-box.

As a child, I was always dancing to a self-made beat, recording my own video show on a digital camera or ruining my family’s dining room table with Sharpie doodles. My hands couldn’t sit still. 

I’ve always had an itch to create. But I was unaware that all of these seemingly insignificant moments had led up to my purpose — journalism.

I didn’t join the newspaper staff until the second semester of my sophomore year. However, journalism has always been in my life, just waiting for me to discover it. 

Growing up, I displayed the attributes of a future journalist — talkative, inquisitive, innovative and assertive. 

But my younger self wouldn’t have guessed that I would eat, sleep and breathe journalism in high school. She wouldn’t have thought that I would be driving home at 2:30 a.m. from a late-night deadline, still smiling ear to ear, despite converting countless photos to CMYK. And she definitely wouldn’t have assumed that I would wake up in the middle of the night from journalism epiphanies or nightmares that something wasn’t completed. 

But 4th-grade Bella with burnt hot glue hands would be immensely proud of the path she paved to be head design and social media editor of her high school newspaper staff and pursue a career in journalism. 

To this day, my hands can’t sit still. And even though newspaper spreads aren’t equivalent to cupcake costumes, both have led me to what I consider — as cliché as it sounds — my journalistic destiny.  

I don’t know what’s ahead, but I’m thrilled for what I can get my hands on next.