When I was five years old, I notified my parents that I was a reporter with ABC News.

They were impressed to learn that (with peanut butter sandwich in hand), I was covering the Northridge, California earthquake, a magnitude 6.7 and one of the greatest natural disasters in American history.

My family watched as I broke the news from my own sources (which amounted to my grandmother's television, though I claimed to have exclusive sources of my own as well.) My dad videotaped my broadcast, which somehow just felt right to me.

No one had ever suggested this to me, and I don't recall any other kids playing newsroom at that age. But with innate curiosity, my fascination with storytelling grew very quickly even when my anchor desk was a blue and orange Fisher-Price table.

Two years later (and still playing newsroom almost daily), I announced a career move - I had joined NBC as an anchor. (I was seven and I guess it was time for a change after 'all' those years at ABC.)

My idols, Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, Bernard Shaw, and Peter Jennings didn't know that I was watching them daily to learn their styles. But I looked to them as my role models as I wrote hundreds of entire play newscasts with timed rundowns and teases.

My limitless childhood curiosity led me as a teenager to attend a workshop for students of color interested in journalism where I connected with the Emma Bowen Foundation. My work as an Emma Bowen Scholar and Fellow catalyzed my pursuit of admission into Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, a goal since I first heard of the school around age 12.

So curiosity has never been just a professional trait for me. It has always led me to important events and milestones throughout my life.

That same driving curiosity is still with me today - as fresh and compelling as ever before. Innate curiosity propels me to find new experiences and set new goals - goals I pursue tenaciously and vigorously. But the motivation - curiosity - has been a constant since I was a kid.

If I could counsel my five-year-old self playing newscaster, I would let him know that today, I actually have my own sources and I actually report real stories that define our world. And I would thank him.

And I would tell him never to stop playing journalist.