My Reflection

This course interested me in a lot of ways starting with just learning about all the different forms of journalism that journalists use to write stories and the different methods applied in these stories. The multimedia package challenged all of us (in more ways than one) how to adapt to the current state of our world. What I mean by that is by learning how to gather data or interview someone on the background of their story relating to a socio inequity.

I think one of my favorite things to do this semester was make a website for submitting my work. To be honest, when I first made my website, I didn’t feel like I needed to apply that much to it so long as my website was just…a website and that the assignments I completed were published. When I got word that my website was unprofessional and needed work, I kind of felt upset by it. I kept thinking “wow, I might not even be keeping this website after this course. What a waste of time. Unprofessional my…” You get it. But upon touching it up a bit by just completely starting over, I came to like how well organized it looked after the fact. It made me deeply interested in either making my own personal website or adding on to this one.

I think one of the more challenging assignments other than the multimedia package project are both L3 assignments. Starting with the crowdsourcing lab, another favorable assignment. With the ability to gain information at an alarming rate in such a short amount of time works well for applying that information into stories. When I researched people of Oakland county, I was astonished yet not surprised to see similar answers to all three questions. It made me think about the areas that involve transportation. If I conducted this survey in the city, I could tell there would be a vast variety of answers ranging from private to public transportation. Data actually makes for a wonderful tool for creating stories because it allowed for me and my partner to gather the evidence we needed to support our claims as well as provide an accurate perspective on our topic.

The interview lab was difficult as I didn’t have the time (at the time) nor other people’s time to conduct the proper research on their lives as well as their stories but I did understand the topic presented to me. This multimedia story was made for us to either make a story involving text and photos or an audio story that contains emotion. I really like to think that getting to invoke feelings in a story is the best way to get through to your audience, engaging them further into your story as much as possible. I think the story of the bus driver I interviewed really captured that journey of emotion that I was attempting to apply to my audience. One with complex issues that makes us human all the same. With storytelling, it’s all the same. Helps me with my writing especially since I need to figure out exactly how to convey the feeling I want to give the audience.

As this semester comes down to a close, after all these assignments have been turned in and published, I actually hope to land a job that incorporates a lot of these techniques from time to time. One that allows me to either connect to a group of people I have yet to come across or to create opportunities for pouring in my creativity using these techniques. Insanely lucky to have had this course this semester. I’m looking forward to its end.