After growing up surrounded by her family of professional teachers, Mikayla Browne broke the mold by going to college as a communication major and creating a podcast.
“I thought I had to be a teacher when I grew up,” Browne laughed as she explained that her parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents are all teachers.
After taking a broadcasting class, Browne decided to start a podcast with her classmate Epsivah Arcia-Bernal. The podcast, Perfectly Not Normal, is story-based. In a typical episode, the ladies invite a guest into the studio, and the guest shares their story. Then the ladies shape a conversation around it.
When the podcast was getting started, Browne and Arcia-Bernal would take an hour out of their schedule each week to record one episode.
Before semester breaks, the ladies will spend multiple hours recording episodes to ensure they have enough content to post.
“I felt a little burnt out,” Browne said after recording eight episodes in one week to prepare for the break. “But it’s my own choice to do this and it’s something Epi and I both love.”
As a double major in corporate communications and multimedia communications with a radio broadcast concentration, Browne says that the podcast is a great supplement to her resume.
Arcia-Bernal admires that Browne is “very driven in the business side” of creating the podcast.
Browne currently works with Olivet’s media services team doing audio and lighting. In addition, she has a show on Shine.FM from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Saturdays and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays.
In terms of the future, Browne has yet to decide what exactly she wants to do.
“My dream job is kind of fuzzy,” she says. “I know that I want to work in a ministry with media.”
Browne grew up as a pastor’s kid—a “PK” as she called it. Her dad was a church planter until she was in fourth grade. As a result, she moved 13 times growing up, yet never left the state of Illinois.
With a smile on her face, Browne reflects back to when she was young and overheard a conversation between her parents and her sister about her sister accepting Christ into her life.
She remembers thinking, “I want to be a part of this [becoming a follower of Christ]. I’m a big kid.”
Once Browne interjected, her mom talked it through with her and pointed out that she only wanted to do it because that’s what her older sister was doing.
A couple of years later, after years of Sunday school, a six-year-old Browne was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese as her mother was praying with her to accept Christ into her life.
Her faith was steadfast until a rebellious phase in her younger teen years when she questioned God and hated him. Browne said wanted to separate herself from the Lord because she thought she was only a Christian because that’s what her family did.
“My heart was really hardened during my middle school years,” she says.
In high school, Browne went on a mission trip with her high school. The weeklong trip to Costa Rica was the turning point in her relationship with God. That trip made her realize that it was her choice to pursue God; it was not something she could do just because her family did it.
For more information about Perfectly Not Normal, click here.
For more information about Shine.fm, click here.
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