I Knew I was a Cardinal when…
…I looked into their journalism program
To say Christian Dixie got a jump start on college would be an understatement.
By the time he was a freshman at Northrop High School in Fort Wayne, he knew he wanted to attend Ball State.
A counselor encouraged him to tag along on a campus visit, mostly with older students, and he fell in love.
I really gravitated toward the school’s journalism program. While we were in the David Letterman building, I was fascinated by the technology and how dedicated Ball State was to journalism.
Dixie’s goal is to become a television news reporter, and he has already shown how comfortable he is on camera.
In March 2020, the college freshman represented Ball State on “Wheel of Fortune” as part of the game show’s College Week. He gracefully crushed his opponents from the University of Iowa and UC Berkeley with an infectious enthusiasm for the game and a non-stop smile.
He won more than $65,000, which he plans to use to pay for college.
The contest aired in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak, and a Yahoo.com news article called Christian “precisely what the world needs now.”
“To have people see who I really am on a national level is mind blowing to me,” he said. “I’m just so blessed and grateful to have all this positive feedback and just so many people uplifted by how happy I was on the show.”
His game show appearance was the second time in two months that Dixie served as a high-profile ambassador for the university. In February, Ball State installed new billboards throughout Indiana, and one of them featured Dixie with his megawatt smile.
“I love it here at Ball State,” he said. “I’ve already done so much as a freshman alone.”