What, or whom, is a Journalist?

(Week One Lecture: "Telling Factual Stories")
Is it rather a bit late to be asking this question, I wonder.
I love to write - this I knew. Armed with this highly intellectual thought, I took the leap to into the vast and complex world that is university life.  I walked into my first lecture JOUR1111 at 2pm on a Monday having chosen  to take a Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts for the sole purpose of having some form of a career in mind for when I graduate from this degree, because, really, I had no idea what to do with my life. In fact, that has yet to really change.
Picture me now in your head, nervous as can be, walking into my first lecture thinking "at least this will probably get me a job", and then hearing within the first few minutes that journalism is facing a serious threat to the industry in the form of social media and citizen journalists.
Bloody citizen journalists. And there I was thinking I would actually get paid for writing. In actuality, I simply had not yet grasped the concept of user generated content at all. I was sitting there thinking, how am I supposed to try and get a job, when people out there are doing the same thing, if not even better, for free.
The thought shocked me back into reality and I realized I had chosen this degree for all the wrong reasons, thinking about jobs was all well and good, but the reason I came out of my first lecture happy as a lamb was not because I was going to get paid for writing one day but because I really enjoyed the lecture. I realized I had not considered the vital question yet; what it meant to be a journalist in the big wide world, and maybe, it's too early to be pondering such big questions.
What I need to do for now is keep on writing - it is the one thing my head and my heart agree upon, and maybe, just maybe, somewhere along the way I'll discover what it really means to be a journalist.