My thoughts on the online speech-based assignment

 

For my first news package in my third-year new media class, we had to do an assignment based on online speeches. 

The assignment was not meant to be difficult that much I got but the thing is that it had so many elements to it that needed loads of time and almost all my attention. The assignment would have been nothing but fun for me had I not had to do most of it during my one week Easter holiday.

All I wanted to do these holidays was chill and focus on trying to find an internship but instead, there was no time to relax. If I even tried to just spend a day curled up with a good book that I had been meaning to read for a month now I would literally feel guilty for neglecting my work.   

So instead of reading my book I read over the speech after spending two hours watching it. I paused it a few times just to make sure I was still awake, but the speech was nice. I really got to understanding it when I read it. I figured out what it was about and then got to writing the news article. 

Some of the challenges were taking a speech done in 2013 and trying to make it newsworthy now by choosing a new, fresh angle. Creating a poll was also a little challenging because figuring out a close ended question was not easy and also deciding where exactly I wanted to post my poll took some time. There was also a lot of stress over whether people would get involved in the poll or just ignore it and move on to more fun things especially because it was on Facebook which I never use.

The fun part came when everything was coming together and I got ready to email it to my lecturer. I always think I can do better on all my assignments so I had the same feeling two minutes before handing this one in but of course, I was out of time to make any changes.  

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Assignments always carry the same lesson for me, which is that I cannot get through life doing things in the last minute. Time management was essential for this assignment to be done well, as it is with all other assignments. 

For the next news package, I plan to start very early so that I have enough time to do all the elements involved with it. Nothing will be done last minute so as to avoid any sloppiness, but to be honest I make the same promise to myself after every assignment. 

How I ended up in journalism

When the time came for me to choose a career path that I saw fit for me it was a very hard decision to make.

Instead of thinking about it throughout high school I was too busy stressing about boyfriends whose last names I cannot even remember now. I had three options in my mind though, it was either I became a medical student which I only liked because of Meredith Grey on Grey’s anatomy. Also I figured which parent would not like to have a doctor for a daughter?

My second option and my personal favourite was studying dramatic arts, I loved this also because I figured I could play a doctor in a television series (Grey’s anatomy.) I realised later though that it is not that easy to be an actress and I feared being stuck at home with no job after having gotten a diploma in dramatic arts. I am not much of a risk taker and neither is my mother who had to agree with the course I was going to take because after all she was going to pay for it.  

So I had to look at my third option, an option that I knew would be a win-win situation for me and my family. My last option was journalism, it became my option because if anything has been constant in my life, it has been my love for writing and a general interest in media. So becoming a journalist became my more realistic choice of study.

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I knew that it would open up a lot of different doors for me, if ever I wanted to be a presenter it would be possible also I could acquire skills in photography, videography, radio, new media etc. with journalism alone I would get to do more and have fun which has always been more important to me than money, because let’s face it we have all heard that journalists do not get paid that much (whatever that means) and my first option of being a doctor would have led me to having a lot of money.

So cutting forward I ended up choosing journalism. I am now doing my last semester of the course, a choice that I think was the best one I could have made. I have fallen in love with the deadlines and constant interest in everything going on in the world. I am a better person and cannot wait for the rest of my life as a journalist to begin.

A quote I always keep in mind is that of Horace Greeley, “Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.”