“You are going to have to set up a blog in order for you to submit your assignments” our tutor, Tracey, explained to a bunch of first years mirroring my expression-bewilderment. Personally, I didn’t even know what a blog was a year ago. And now, they were expecting an entire class of journalism 1 students to know how to do this. I was sure I was not the only one.
Due to the fact that we were studying narrative and genre in the third term, it was only natural that the fourth term’s more practical course would be confined to one genre - blogging. During the onset of the course, being put into groups was comforting, as the general feeling was that of confusion.
I found blogging to be quite an interesting and fascinating genre of journalism. I, along with the rest of my group did not find this genre at all limiting, if anything, it was quite flexible. The fact that we could communicate by means of text, music, slideshows, photos and by editing our profiles made it that more diverse. The only thing that might have curbed our inspiration was time constraints. I usually work very well under pressure, except for the fact that journalism is not my only subject and having up to four deadlines, for one subject, per week, was a little rough.
Last Saturday night, a friend and I were busy putting the final touches to our JMS 2 applications, when a frantic “gtalk” bubble popped up screaming, “The comment is due for tonight!!” Flat panic. It was 22 45. That left an hour and a bit to find a blog to comment on and write something substantial. The constantly changing deadlines not only put a curb on our productivity, but it sent most of us into flying fits of rushed confusion. We immediately rushed off to our own rooms to complete the assignment only to find out the next morning in class that the assignment was due for that night, Monday night.
Coming up with story ideas was not a problem for me. The assignments that we had been given throughout the term, I thought were interesting and I enjoyed them. We had not been given this sort of creative freedom before, as our previous writing course had been confined to the news genre. However, I did feel that the theme we were given was a little overdone; we had dealt with our experiences as first years in our news writing course. This was a little off putting, because whenever I read the assignment brief, my energy for the new piece would deflate as I realised I would have to link it back to my first year. Thus, I feel that confining a theme to one year is a little creatively limiting.
In terms of writing, I feel that I learnt a great deal about the different styles of writing, for example, the letter, the profile (although we did this in the first term), the photo comic strip, the opinion piece and now the reflexive piece. However, I was a little disappointed when I realised the reflexive piece was about our course, and not about, once again, our first year experience. To be quite honest, I had become used to writing on this subject and was looking forward to it, or at least somehow relating my story back to my first year.
I didn’t do any in-depth research for any of my pieces, apart from interviewing a couple of people, and browsing the odd internet site and so I didn’t really have to worry about verifying my facts as I did so while doing the initial researching. Neither did I experience any difficulty with my sources, although I did find it challenging while interviewing one particular source. I had decided to do my profile piece on a friend, whom I believed to be a true survivor of not just first year varsity, but her personal life as well. I had to interview her at 7 30 in the morning as she was heading home for a couple of days. I remember watching her sitting on her chair in her purple Roxy shirt recalling the events of the past two years with a smile on her face. I found this slightly unsettling as the last two years and not been easy for her, although at the same time it was uplifting, as instead of becoming wrapped up in a world of uncertainty and sadness again, she told the story as though she was an outsider with an insider’s perspective.
On a Wednesday morning, I attended my journalism lecture as per normal, and as per usual I sat in the same spot. There is always something unconventional that happens in our lectures due to the odd practices of our one lecturer, but, I definitely wasn’t expecting what was about to happen. I listened, gobsmacked as this one said lecturer read out aloud a student’s polite, diplomatic email. In the letter, she explained how she felt that the workload for this specific class was slightly heavy and how she did not appreciate it when this said lecturer generalised that all students will go out, party and get drunk before they even consider their work. She divulged personal information in this email about why she was having difficulty meeting deadlines, only for it to be read out to the entire journalism 1 class. This lecturer then covered up by saying he had done so by way of example for our next piece, the opinion piece. This is the only ethical concern I have faced in the duration of this course, as I believe it is a violation of privacy. Nobody sends an email to a lecturer expecting for it to be read out in class.
All in all, I feel that due to my experiences in this course, deadline mishaps and unethical practices included, I have learnt a great deal, not only about journalism, but life as well. I realise now that journalism is not just about writing stories, but about the message you leave behind once you type that full stop.
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