By Chris Polansky
Class of 2019
Rachel Green ‘20, who has found herself reporting for the New York Post on the front lines in the epicenter of a global pandemic, gave up trying to plan her life long ago. “ I realize that you need to take things day by day and that will get you wherever you’re supposed to be,” she said.
Growing up “in the middle of nowhere, in the hills” of Waverly, W. Va., (pop. 395), Green knew she wanted to be part of a world beyond Appalachia. So, she not only earned multiple undergraduate degrees, she pursued a master’s in linguistics and taught English as a second language.
Then she was offered a job as a lecturer at the University of Murcia in Spain. “I didn’t really think about it too much,” she said. “I’d always wanted to learn another language. I love traveling. So, I said, ‘Let’s go!’”
She was overwhelmed when she landed, having moved sight unseen with nothing but her luggage and her rescue dachshund to Murcia, Spain’s seventh largest city. She had nowhere to stay and didn’t speak Spanish. She cried.
But “it was never an option for me to leave,” she said, attributing her resolve to her upbringing. She lost her mother early, and “my father taught me how to be very, very independent.”
She persisted in southeast Spain. “My first year was about discovery,” she said. “My second year was more frustration. You’re still trying to figure out this new culture. And then in that third year, you’re fluent in the language, and you either embrace it or you leave.” She embraced it— along with a new passion for broadcasting.
A friend’s father worked for a TV station, which Green casually mentioned she always wanted to try. She got an interview and was hired. Suddenly, she was in a studio. Something clicked. “I just felt completely at home,” she said, thinking: “This is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”
She spent three years in Spain, covering food, culture, entertainment, “a little bit of everything.” She then realized she wanted to improve her journalism and found the Newmark J-School through an internet search. “I wanted to go to journalism school in the journalism capital of the world, NYC, so I started looking. It was the most affordable and I liked how the school had a very hands-on approach to learning. It was more like a trade school than traditional lecture classes, which really appealed to me.”
She is enthusiastic about her work with Vanessa Botelho, the J-School’s broadcast journalist-in-residence. “She’s giving us real-world advice that we can use to become better newscasters, better anchors, better reporters. It’s all I want to do – these are the classes I live for,” Green said.
When Green’s not in a TV studio, she’s chasing stories for the New York Post across the five boroughs and beyond. Besides reporting on construction accidents in Columbus Circle, police shootings in the Bronx, even stakeouts in rural Arkansas, she is covering the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m out in the world asking moms and kids and people how they are doing with closures [while] trying to maintain social distancing,” she said. “But it’s definitely complicated … My office is trying to [allow for more in-the-newsroom] phone calls and research, but it’s difficult to do. We still need coronavirus coverage, and reporters are still being sent into [the stricken city] to bring the news to the world.”
Her journalism degree will be her second master’s. What’s next? “I think my experience at the New York Post is helping me explore the city, meet a lot of people, and make connections that will help me have a future career in television. I don’t know what my next step will be after the Post, but I look forward to what the future holds for me in New York City.”
And just as before, she’ll be off to a new adventure.