Call her gutsy. One could even call her a go-getter.

But just don’t utter the word, “afraid” when you speak of Tamara Best.

As she races against time to meet tight deadlines, she remains cool and unruffled, eagerly seeking the challenge.

“It’s like an adrenaline rush,” Best said.

Best said she always knew she wanted to go into a profession that helps people.

 After a volunteer community service trip to Guatemala in 2005, she wrote an article for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about her experiences in the country. It was then that she discovered journalism was her calling.

 ”I realized I don’t have to be a doctor, lawyer or social worker in order to make an impact in my own community,” Best said. “I can do that by doing what I love every day. That’s just getting up, meeting new people, covering and telling their stories, putting pen to paper.”

 With the lay off of journalists and the closing of newspapers all over the country, she said many of her peers ask her, “Why don’t you change your profession?”

 She answers calmly, with poise and both a sense of pride and duty. “I feel like without journalism and journalists doing their job, democracy is in danger,” Best said.No society can progress “without holding public officials accountable” she said.

 Best, 20, is a rising senior in journalism in the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia in Athens. She is on pace to graduate this December, one semester ahead of schedule.

No stranger to getting in the trenches, Best has worn the hats of reporter and recruitment and managing editors for UGA’s daily newspaper, The Red & Black.

“It’s a fight to the finish,” Best said. “If you love what you do, and you’re good at it, and you are willing to grind, everything will work out.”