passion for journalism

My interest in media and communication has been unwavering since I was in high school. Every time I watched TV as a child, I was filled with awe for the people who worked in my favorite stations. This appreciation gradually blossomed into a fantasy that has been a part of my experiences throughout my junior and senior high school years.

As soon as I was admitted to South California School, I joined the journalistic club in high school. My enthusiasm and attention to this training swiftly elevated me to a position of power in the club. I quickly gained the respect of all the members present. They were utterly impressed with my charisma and ability to create humour from every situation I was. My eloquence in public speaking complimented by my perfect skills in writing helped me establish myself as a kingpin in our club earning me the admiration of all and sundry.

In preparing for my intended major, I knew how significant it was to enhance and perfect my communication skills to even beat the high standards set by the few who were naturally gifted in this course. Besides, I developed a culture of reading everything ranging from newspapers all the way to billboards in an attempt of having a better grip on copywriting. It was evident that majority of the skills I needed to succeed in my journalism course in university were associated with the reading foundation I was building in my high school.

After developing the above habit in my reach, I decided to apply the knowledge I was gaining in perfecting my creativity. I knew very well that my journalism course will be competitive with limited opportunities in the communication industry. Hence, I embraced the art of storytelling to exercise my speaking skills even before I joined the university. I ensured that I was able to move the masses with my stories while instilling emotions in my work.

All these experiences have prepared me adequately for the challenge which lies ahead of me. I have made massive improvements in working independently and networking and socializing. The latter are real crucial skills for success in my course in the university since I will never survive in this course without social interactions.

Question Two

At one point, my high school journalism club was selected to be among the best schools in the region to participate in an open event competition. As an active member, I highly believed in all the participants who like me were highly motivated to sweep the board by winning all the available trophies. We embarked on serious preparation by working together, sharing ideas and coming up with new ways that would make as stand out. Besides our own efforts, we invited some well-known individuals in the field of journalism to give us useful insight into our activity. A few days to the highly awaited event, some members seemed to lose faith in the group. It was done after it dawned on them that their chief competitors were serial winners of this competition. The latter boosted a record of five consecutive wins in the last for years.

It made it so difficult for the group to progress since it leads to increased disagreements and conflicts within the members. Consequently, the captain had a very hard time coordinating the members with any thought of receding slowly being waved away by the shame associated with it. The turnout of these events made me feel devastated. I never wanted to miss out on these since I always felt energized and satisfied whenever we did something together.

The situation became unbearable as days went by and I thought maybe I should chip in and try to cool down the situation. I felt the need to bring back all the members and sort out all the differences existing for us to go ahead with the activity. First, I asked the captain to summon every member of the club with immediate effect with no room for absentees at all. Once we were all settled in our training room, I used my orator skills and charisma to ensure that I gained the attention of all the members present. After a hooking introduction, I succinctly gave them a sharp reminder on our past operations highlighting how deeply we had declined in such a short period. I gave them more than enough reasons why we should not give up on ourselves. Instead, they should bring out the best out of us and prove to our competitors that we have always been the best when it came to putting our talent and skills into practice.

Immediately, I was done with my talk, the captain and other members came up and seconded me. We handled all the conflicts that existed amongst ourselves. Thus, all the members who had opted to walk out of the group decided to be part of this project again. We further embarked on polishing all our preparations with great intent and determination.

I never realized that I could ever be an influential figure to anybody. Every member looked up to me as a leader, and I realized that I did not have to be the captain to lead them. It was evident that being a leader involved the ability to bring all the members together and handle any disputes that may hinder the success of the group. At this point, I learnt that it is very necessary to work with everyone at equal levels and make everybody have a sense of belonging to something great and beautiful.

Question Three

Creativity is all about the ability of an individual to come up with something unique. For me, I always expressed my creative side during the crafting and coming up of new articles for the club. The latter were aimed at attracting the attention of students to either attend activities organized by the journalism club or any other organization in school. It always felt great whenever I was in the company of the smart students. They were known for their ability to come up with high-quality articles that were featured in the school magazine. As an individual, I was always responsible for coming up with creative writings concerning the trending issues in school and the day-to-day activities.

The interesting part is that my articles always had the best response from the students and they still gave positive feedback about the items. In the current time, I can express my creative skills in the field of mass media in numerous ways. Nowadays people prefer news which are interesting and can easily attract the attention of the audience with minimal effort. I have the skills on how to collect the relevant data and produce it in such a way that it appears to be unique and eye-catching. As much as I am good at creating interesting articles, there is the need to meet the demand of the target audience. I need to be conversant with the demands of the people and how I can use my creativity to achieve them. It makes it necessary for me as a student to work harder in order to have a close connection with people of all kind alongside their values.

With the ever-evolving technology, a lot of resources are available supporting the field of journalism. It will help me advocate for the articles which do not tend to be biased in any way. Hence, everybody will find them quite receptive, once they come into contact with them. Through my high school experience as a journalist member, I have learned a lot which has assisted me in improving my creativity. Then, it makes me yearn for more exposure into the field of journalism to fully exploit my skills and abilities.

Question Four

The most significant challenge was during my first two months of high school. When I joined high school, I was completely naïve in my expectation, especially from the students. The latter seemed to be strangers from the first look displaying very deceptive countenance. Before attending high school, I was more of an extrovert, since I associated with people very often. However, my earlier experience in school was sharply contrasting my nature and I often found myself a victim of ridicule from most of my schoolmates. I was slowly losing my macho and ego and confidence was next to nil. The swaggering show I used to be accompanied with wherever I went complimented by my intimidating presence was done a massive blow. For the first time in my lifetime, I was contemplating on giving up on my dreams.

It felt so frustrating, especially when I found it very hard to have a personal friend to talk to. The challenges were overwhelming making it difficult for me to even link to group discussions with my fellow students. I developed an abnormal sense of fear which proved to be a stumbling block to most of the productive activities that I wanted to engage. For instance, I constantly feared to go for consultations to the teachers, a move that saw me perform poorly in my first exams. As days passed by, I knew I had to do something to change my situation before it got the better of me.

First, I decided to talk to our counselling teacher who was always friendly to students. She was quite helpful in supporting me handle the problem I was going through. She proposed to be the first friend of me I should confront and she helped me find the part in me that was always free with people. After several sessions of sharing with her, I noticed that I had started talking to a few students whom I had not associated with from before.

The significant progress I was making contributed greatly to restore my ego and confidence. With time, I was able to mingle freely with my classmates who found it quite interesting interacting with me. Once I was able to make friends, I found it easy to engage in class discussions with them which helped me greatly in my studies. Besides, I noticed that I could not interact freely since some students are introverts and nothing can change that. I became very free with my teachers and actually, I came to be quite popular among the teachers due to the frequent consultations and presentations I made in class.