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As a student in the School of Journalism at The University of Arizona, I have grown to both love and hate my major for a variety of reasons. Now that I am halfway through my junior year, I have experienced a good portion of the core classes for a print-focus student, but it hasn’t been entirely enjoyable up to this point. As much I has have loved writing in the past, the rules of journalism have caused me to feel differently about the craft, and at times, totally resent it. It may be a case of me being “burnt out” for the time being, but in the meantime, I’ll describe a few reasons why journalism can be tricky for the assumingly-wanna-be news reporter.
Know what you’re getting
into:
Before I became a journalism major in the spring semester of my freshman year, I started out on the pre-business track, destined for the Eller College of Management to study marketing. After an embarrassing and terrible experience in what is a basic college level math course, I quickly realized that a major involving math was not for me and I needed to change, fast!
I have always had an enthusiasm for writing and figured a major in journalism could be just the trick. I knew an English or creative writing major didn’t appeal to me so journalism sounded like the perfect solution. I made the switch and without thinking about the fact that journalism equals news reporting, I absorbed myself in what is now the School of Journalism a UA.
I don’t know why, but to me, journalism was a major with girls who wanted to write for magazines, and guys who wanted to be sports reporters, perhaps because my ultimate goal is to work for a high fashion magazine and nothing more. I didn’t even fancy the idea that before any student can get to that level of enjoyment, there are core classes that are necessary before any such fun could begin. These core classes involved long, tedious and quite frankly, boring news reporting classes that eliminated all forms of creative writing and left students with AP Style, inverted pyramid structure and straight news leads to work with.
While these tasks are appealing to some, they most certainly are not for me and only forced me to loathe coming to class each day and writing such lackluster stories. Fortunately, there are other outlets in journalism that I was bound to uncover, and it was only a matter of time before these hideous classes would be over with and the fun stuff could start.
It doesn’t necessarily get
better:
So after a year or so in the department, I continued on with the unfortunate reporting, editing, media law and ethics courses that were required of me. I had survived, but with little hope that anything positive was going to come out of my choice of becoming a journalism major. The classes became more advanced, and the inverted pyramid structure , AP Style and sinfully straight news leads were not going away. I hated it.
Thoughts of other potential majors wandered through my mind, but nothing else sounded good. I have always had an enormous interest in fashion, but not so much in the design and business aspect of it. The fun and featurised side of fashion completely unrelated to reporting was definitely the route I was on board for. So I thought about retail and consumer sciences as another potential switch but low and behold, that required math. Clearly, a no go for me. So I decided to stick it out and figured that if I graduate with a degree in journalism, a magazine was bound to hire me in some area of writing, but the good kind of writing that I like, and if not, the transition would be easy, kind of.
Once I accepted the fact that as long as I suck it up and deal with the rest of my journalism major, my dream job at Vogue, Elle or Harpers Bazaar could eventually become a reality. This understanding gave me an extra boost of motivation and made me want to succeed in my journalism classes, especially since I was on course for the fun ones.
You’ll find your niche,
eventually:
Once my motivation set in, I was feeling back on track for a successful college career. The summer before my junior year I took a magazine class and developed a new fervor for photography. The photo class revealed to me a skill I always wished I had but never executed. It felt good to know there were other options in journalism for me that I could be successful in, and that I really enjoyed.
Following the photography I finally took a feature writing class in the fall. This was it and I was so excited to tackle fun stories and write freely. I had an amazing instructor, Professor Jay Rochlin, who really encouraged me to try new angles, explore unconventional topics and be creative. Thanks to professor Rochlin, I felt I had truly identified my niche in journalism and felt good knowing that there was something out there for me in the field.
Even though I was not able to write about fashion topics throughout the whole class, I was able to explore issues that I didn’t realize I could be interested in. Now that I’ve completed the class, I’ve looked back on my work from it and feel good about what I accomplished.
It’s all about
multimedia:
It’s no great secret that the journalism profession has been on a downward spiral, particularly for newspapers. Thankfully, magazines are still doing well, but everything is moving to online and I know I need to acquire more multimedia skills.
At UA, the journalism school is transitioning its curriculum to cater towards the increasing need for multimedia skills for students. Knowing this, I am taking an advanced photography class this semester and preparing for my senior capstone course to be an online publication. Professors throughout the department are emphasizing the need for students to be competitive and implementing more complex assignments that are forcing us to embrace the technology and learn the new tricks of the trade.
At this point in my education, I have a little over a year to go and am much more optimistic that journalism was a good choice for me. While I still experience those moments where I want to abandon writing all together, tear my AP Style book up into pieces and change to a different major, I know that I am in a good position for success as long as I stay motivated and stick to what I’m good at. I’ve found that it’s easy to enjoy what you’re doing once you find your niche in any specialized area. Just picking journalism seemed like a mistake to me initially, but it has turned out to be a good thing. I’m determined to end up at a magazine publication and am confident that one day, Vogue will be happy to have me.