Diamond Weathersby

Diamond Weathersby, a spring 2006 journalism graduate, chose Columbia over a dozen other colleges. "When I found out I could take classes in my major the first semester of my first year at Columbia, I was sold. And when I learned that my classes would be taught by people doing what I want to do - well, there was really no other choice anymore..."

Diamond is one of those students who might have gone to college anywhere. She skipped the sixth grade at Bennett Elementary School on Chicago's South Side. She won a Daniel Murphy Scholarship to Lake Forest Academy--a prestigious North Shore boarding school--and graduated in 2002 at age 16. Her academic foundation is undoubtedly strong. But in Diamond's family, love for the arts held sway. Her dad, Marvin, became a Chicago police office to support his songwriting and music recording addiction. Her mom is a postal worker by day, who by night, transforms herself into Laretha, Princess of the Blues, singing with such blues notables as KoKo Taylor, Howard Scott and Lil' Johnny Johnson. While the chameleon quality of her life at home on the South Side and at high school on the North Shore may have helped shape her expectations, "Lake Forest," she explains, "did not make me who I am. It allowed me to be who I already was."

After selecting Columbia over other schools such as Pomona College in California, Marquette, Wooster, Loyola, and DePaul, Diamond hit the ground running.  She got published her first semester, and her work has appeared regularly in college publications such as The Columbia Chronicle and the college's student e-zine. She's been published in "outside" papers as well, including NV Magazine and the Chicago Defender. She has won two Fischetti journalism awards at Columbia, two internship stipends from the Tribune Foundation, and a scholarship from the Association of Women Journalists. She has held internships at the Chicago Reporter, a publication dedicated to issues of race and poverty, and with The HistoryMakers, an organization that has created an archive of thousands of African American video oral histories. She has also been a tour guide for the college's office of undergraduate admission since her freshman year.

What's next for Diamond? Her business card says it all: "Ms. J. Diamond Weathersby - Wordsmith - specializing in investigative and interpretative reporting, opinion writing and editorials, fiction writing and short stories, children's stories, columns, speeches, essays, poetry, songs, biographies, and screenplays."

"I am a black girl from the South Side who cannot have a mediocre life now," she explains matter-of-factly. "It has to be as big as what I've seen."