This passion blog has been a long time coming. My passion blog for this week is actually a collection of new things I tried in the past couple weeks. Two of the new things I tried were for The Daily Collegian, meaning that they were career oriented, and the other new thing I tried I tried was just kind of random.
For my article this week, I decided to try something new. Instead of writing a typical Thanksgiving article, where I would only need to interview three sources and cover a small topic, I decided to write a Thanksgiving feature. Feature articles are longer, more all-encompassing news articles in which you interview more people and go more in depth than a normal article.
For the article, I interviewed three professors and two students about their Thanksgiving traditions. Their responses ended up being really cute, ranging anywhere from picking blueberries to make blueberry pie to visiting Harry Potter World.
I immediately got going, eager to start my interviews since I would need to do five in one week. I interviewed the BiSci professor during his office hours and talked to him about how he harvests fresh vegetables and sings classic American folksongs for Thanksgiving.
Next, I talked to Professor Wooten about how he travels with his wife for Thanksgiving every year because she’s from Thailand and he’s from Texas and they don’t have any family in the area.
Then I interviewed two students and learned about their traditions of integrating Japanese food into the typical Thanksgiving spread and picking blueberries in Northern Maine.
Finally, I interviewed a communications professor and he told me about how he invites students that don’t have a place to go for Thanksgiving over to his house to eat dinner with him and his family.
The second new thing I tried was having a photoshoot. The Daily Collegian has a whole photography department and, up until this point, I have never been present for the photography aspect of publishing the daily paper, but this past Tuesday I was.
After the interviews, one of the photographers for the Collegian had me set up a time and a place to do a photoshoot. Then I had to get the two students, who had kindly agreed to have their photos taken, props that matched up with their traditions. I bought blueberries and rice from Maclanahan’s and showed up to the photo shoot the next day.
After introducing the photographer to the two students, I didn’t do muchelse. I gave my opinions on a couple of different shots when asked and the photoshoot ended up going really well, adding the perfect visual aspect to my article.
Lastly, I tried eating at a new place within Redifer dining hall. I eat at Redifer every single day, but often find myself getting the same things. I eat sushi, chicken fingers or a salad for lunch on any given day. In the spirit of trying new things, I tried eating at the Mexican restaurant within Redifer and, just like how every other risk I’ve taken for this blog has gone, the results were great. I got a burrito bowl and it was really good and no
w I have a new lunch place to visit.
Trying new things = success.