Before pursuing journalism, I wanted to be a librarian, an architect, a famous actress, and a parapsychologist.

It turns out I have a better shot at a career in journalism than in parapsychology.

My dad was strict about grammar in our house, correcting my tenses and subject-verb agreement starting when I was about five years old. Despite my groans and eye-rolls, I discovered I was good at — and really liked — writing.

I turned an obsession for perfect, error-free writing into an editing career in college. I learned more about good writing by being an editor, and I enjoy helping college writers make their stories more effective by tweaking ledes, cleaning up grammar, and probing them for the details that can make a good story great.

Right now, I’m a copy editor at Business Insider in New York City. Before that, I was a Dow Jones News Fund copyediting intern at The New York Times. And before that, I started at The University Daily Kansan, the student newspaper at the University of Kansas. There, I worked my way up from entertainment correspondent to editor in chief.

After my internship at The Times, I headed back to The Kansan to shake up a media company that has been around for more than 100 years. If you’re interested, check out our plan (which mostly worked!) to overhaul The Kansan’s culture, reporting, and more.

Since moving to New York in 2016 and starting at Business Insider, I’ve sharpened my skills in not only the basics of editing but story framing, fact-checking, and editing for voice, accuracy, and fairness — looking at an article from all angles as quickly and effectively as possible, while sometimes thousands of readers are flocking to it. It’s a delicate balance of speed and quality.

I tell people when they ask what I do that I get paid to sit there and learn every day, whether it’s US tax policy or why a “whom” in a tricky sentence actually should be “who.” And I’m just getting started.