photo via Kylee Higgins
Some people find their passions early in life, but for others, it does not come easy. For Aamir Mitchell, inspiration and passion comes from the people around him.
Mitchell, a junior, is majoring in journalism, but it wasn’t always that way. Before he landed in journalism, he changed his major from finance to undecided communications to public relations to advertising and finally to journalism.
“[I] can go into multiple different topics with journalism,” Mitchell said. “[I] can do music or games or fashion or news … and that appealed to me. So that way I wouldn’t have to stick to one thing, and I can kind of branch out.”
Mitchell said many driving forces in his life come from creative and artistic outlets, such as music.
“It means everything to me,” Mitchell said. “A lot of people say they would be dead without music. I don’t know if I would be dead without music, but I think that it’s very necessary to get through things.”
According to Mitchell, Kid Cudi serves as one of his biggest role models after watching him present a TedTalk in which he spoke about trying one’s best to achieve success.
“His music is very inspirational to me,” Mitchell said. “He just inspired me to actually follow my dreams, so my plan is to try to follow my dreams as quickly as possible, and see if it works. But if not, then I’ll have degrees [from school] and things to fall back on.
According to Mitchell, he is beginning to follow his dreams and has big plans for the summer.
“I’m trying to create this fashion blog, and I’m also trying to create a comic book to go along with it,” Mitchell said. “The fashion [blog] that I’m doing is full of characters, and the characters tell a story, and then it’s going to coincide with the shirts or clothes that I make.”
Since coming to Bradley, Mitchell said he has been able to explore different creative outlets and has grown because of them. Mitchell said he has even picked up an art minor in his time here.
“The best thing about being here for me has been the classes, and I can say that I’ve had a lot of great professors who have inspired me and taken me under their wing in a way to show me different things that I could do that I never knew that I could do,” Mitchell said.
Though he said he enjoys the flexibility in his major that Bradley provides, Mitchell said Bradley was not his first option for college.
“I never wanted to come here,” Mitchell said. “One thing I know is that everything happens for a reason. I was trying to go to this historically black university called Howard in [Washington] D.C., and I got accepted.”
Unfortunately, Mitchell said he was unable to go.
“I didn’t get the right financial aid package, and I was so determined to go there,” Mitchell said. “I found out I couldn’t go to [Howard] on my birthday, and I cried. It was terrible.”
Since then, Mitchell said he has worked on being a positive person and tries to spread his optimism to the people in his life.
“I don’t really think of myself as an inspirational individual,” Mitchell said. “At the end of the day, when people see me, I want them to just like see that I am a positive person, and even if I’m not happy, they see happiness on my face, and that translates to them, and that affects them in a positive way.”
