To be or Not to be a Writer.

     The past two months have been a colossal struggle for me in this class. Getting acclimated to AP style and being exposed to various styles of stories have been a huge challenge but a rather large learning opportunity. Although I hate AP style with a passion, I see the benefits of getting familiar with it, since press releases use it.

     I absolutely enjoy our group work and group presentations, since it allows room for creativity. The recent one being the presentation that we did last week. The activity allowed us to be in a reporter's shoes, especially that of a broadcast journalist's.

     I particularly enjoyed the profile stories since it allowed me to interact with a subject. It felt good to be a reporter again. I say again since I used to work for the Journal Times. In order to get good details for the interview, I had worked on the questions that consisted of open ended questions and non double barrelled questions. I had set up a face-to-face interview as well, since I wanted to see the emotions that went along with the responses. I learnt that this made a difference since the in person interview made me have a memorable interview. Another key component to remember is to write down all the responses. I made little notes as I was getting responses from the interviewee.

     What helped me tremendously in this assignment was editing the paper after reading aloud. When you read aloud your work, you get to listen to how your writing actually sounds. I have grown to like this class as opposed to the first few weeks. Comm 255 is definitely not like other Communication classes that I have taken. Most of the Communication classes require one to write, research, and reflect based on theories, amongst others.

     I look forward to the next class and hope that we will touch base on broadcast journalism and even writing press releases since I am minoring in Public Relations. On a side note, although I worked for the Journal Times, my beat was focused on night life and I never really used AP style. I see the huge difference in professional journalism and what I was covering for the Journal Times.

-Mila