Throw yourself into all of your subjects. A reporter needs to have a good sense of how the world works so that he or she can understand it well enough to explain it to someone else. I am a student of journalism from Zagreb, Croatia. College is invaluable in learning story structure, the use of clear language and how to harness the utter power of words. I have an undergraduate and graduate degree in journalism, and those years in the classroom gave me a rich perspective on journalism not as simply story-telling, but as a means of enlightenment, even transformation of cultures, political and economic systems.
People have an amazing drive to be informed, to know.
Also, a college education helps to ground a journalist in a firm understanding of the world around him or her. Understanding how the world works, its history and tendencies, is essential to mastering a profession that is based on self-enlightenment and the broad sharing of that enlightenment with anyone who cares to read your words, today or a thousand tomorrows later. Yes, of course there were advantages and disadvantages when I started on my path to a career in journalism. My biggest disadvantage was that I did not know anyone who ever made a living writing. Such a thing was the stuff of television shows, like on the old Patty Duke show.