Maggie Glass
Blog 4
Election Day Reflection
Knowing I had to do a hard news story on Election Day really scared me. I’m not really into politics and don’t know too much about the election itself. Along with that my partner was going to be out of town and I signed up to work with the international students. I thought that working with international students would be a great experience, but it proved to be more of a challenge than I anticipated.
Students come to the HUB to vote in the midterm election, on November 4, 2014.
I had met with the international students on November 3rd to go over what our day would hold and how we should plan it out. I was under the impression that we would bounce ideas off of each other and work together, but when we sat down to talk that was not the case. As they should have, they looked at me for information and people on campus to talk to while they were here. They didn’t know too much about the event and were asking me a bunch of questions that I did not know the answers to. Not having my partner with me, not knowing the answers to their questions, and not knowing what I was going to do my story on really stressed me out. So, I reached out and went to Dr. Z’s office hours to discuss my project. Dr. Z definitely put my mind at ease, and I was so relieved I went to talk to him.
There were a couple places people could go to vote on Election Day, and I decided to do my story at the HUB. I met up with the international students, who had been there since 7am and we talked about the angel we wanted to take. To be honest, I just got frustrated working with them very quickly, because they were asking me for an interview and I was under the impression that we were working together on a project. Instead of continuing to try to work together I decided to tell them that we should just work on our projects separately.
After I made this call, things started to turn around. As Dr. Z had suggested, I shot a lot b-roll and interviewed as many people as I could. Covering the election was a challenge, because not everyone wants to talk to you, especially about voting. After I got my footage I went to Dr. Z, as he suggested, to talk about what angel I should take. He was so helpful and we decided together that I would focus on money spent on campaigning and its affects on the actual outcome of the election.
I learned a lot from this experience. At first, I thought that you had to have a concrete idea of what you wanted to do your story on before going out into the field. I found that going into Election Day with an open mind was very helpful. I was able to be at the event, talk to the people, get a feel for the environment and then think about what kind of approach I would take. I’ll definitely take that with me as I go to work on future projects. All in all, I think the project went well. There were bumps in the road, but Dr. Z helped put my mind at ease and I think everything turned out well.