Jessica Goff, 26, has always found herself marching to the beat of her own drum. Whether sitting in her car lost in the sound of Terry Gross’s voice while listening to NPR or discussing current events with her classmates at Florida A&M University, Goff  always finds a way to flash her smile and forever remain content with the small things in life.

“My friends consider me pretty quirky,” Goff, a native of Fort Myers, Fla., said. “Sometimes you just have to have the ability to laugh at yourself.”

Goff’s light-hearted nature is directly reflected in her taste in literature.

“Carl Hiaasen really influenced me as a teenager,” Goff said referring to the novelists who often wrote off-beat books about the destruction of his state. “I’ve read about six of his books, and the fact that he wrote about corruption in south Florida really interested me.”

With dreams as big as her personality, the senior journalism major looks forward to one day either moving west to continue her career as a reporter or maybe working for her favorite radio program, NPR. Even the loathsome state of the industry can’t damper her spirits regarding her future.

“The fact that the journalism industry is in the shape that it’s in does not bother me at all, honestly,” Goff said. “There’s always going to be a need for writers. There is always going to be a need for people to get the really important news out to the general public.”

Goff’s outlook on life, much like her view of the field of journalism itself, is that everything will eventually work out the way it should.

“Journalism, in its purest form, is the act of reporting the truth. Journalists are like the watchdogs for society, in my opinion,” she  said. “There will always be a need for people who refuse to turn a blind eye to the problems we face as a whole.”