Final Reflection

This semester has been the best semester for me by far. Some of the changes I made may seem like small ones, but they have really helped me in succeeding this semester. Mainly, deciding not to work, has given me a whole lot more time to dedicate to homework and studying. The second biggest thing for me was really pushing myself to be more organized, and the proof is in the pudding.

JRN 4100 has tested my journalistic skills in many different ways, and honestly feels similar to what I will encounter in the real world of journalism. The course was pretty heavy in terms of work load, with many deadlines to remember, and a lot of content to produce. The theme, or main topic of immigration is a real world topic that I found interesting in the different angles, POVs, and content that you can produce to cover this topic.

Being a car enthusiast and enjoying writing lead me to a back-up plan of automotive journalism which is really where I'd like to take my skills. So, sticking with a topic that is somewhat outside my comfort zone really challenged my skills and made me stronger in the end. I got a taste of a little bit of everything, from writing and audio, to compiling data to support evidence and shooting pictures/videos.

Also the emphasis on collaboration in groups was very helpful and prepares me for what I may encounter in my upcoming internship. All of my previous jobs have been hands-on, assembling raw materials into a finished product, so venturing out to try a job that will require more creativity and gathering information will be interesting for me. However, I can confidently say that this class has taught me a lot of skills and challenged me in a way that I feel prepared to take that step.

Some of the more challenging bits of this class were using and understanding the different audio and video editing software. Having rarely used these programs, the course gave me an opportunity to get my feet wet in both aspects of audio and video, which are important when I consider creating automotive content in the future.

My professor, Dr. Adina Schneeweis, also taught me one of the biggest things I've learned which was to "kill a piece", and I heavily embraced it. There have been points where I felt like the content I made was not up to my standards, and wasn't good, so I scrapped it and started over. Dr. Schneeweis has also given me a lot of confidence in the work that I created, which is important to me because I'm the only Mechanical Engineer in a room full of students that are majoring in the field of journalism. So to have that confidence going into a job or an internship that I've never done before is really empowering...And I cant thank her enough for that.

#reflection #ready #TheHourDetroit