Looking back on this semester, I think I learned a lot of valuable information that I will carry with me throughout my career. There were definitely some points in the year when the class was stressful, but I think that it provided a real world feel and helped to better prepare me for life in the broadcast industry.
I thought it was really interesting how Dr. Z. followed a group project philosophy in this class. My expectations entering the semester were that we would be doing our projects either alone or with a single partner. It was difficult to do the first two projects with such a large group (5 people) simply because it was impossible to find a time when all five of us were available. Once the groups were narrowed down to a smaller number, it became a lot easier to coordinate schedules and have everyone be involved in the process. I think working in a smaller group was really successful because all three of us got along well and we worked really well together, which made the final two projects a lot easier to complete.
The weekly story ideas were a good tool that aided our learning. I think by doing them, it really forced us to go out and find a story worth telling. It was great because it allowed us to find stories that were beyond what we were doing for our projects. If we had just focused on our project ideas, we wouldn’t have had any practice at finding a new and interesting story every week. So they were really a great addition to the class.
The tips and techniques that I learned in this class will definitely help me out later in life. I think that everything we learned, no matter how small, was a valuable piece of information that will help me to be a better reporter and broadcaster one day. I think the most valuable piece of information that we learned was the sequence shot that we learned about on one of the very first days of class. Even though this seems obvious and minuscule, including a sequence shot in the package really seems to make the package that much better. Knowing that and being able to incorporate sequence shots into my package have made me a much better reporter.
Overall, this class was really great and provided a lot of valuable advice and lessons. I’m confident with my ability to write a script, web story, blog and shoot a package after taking this class with Dr. Z.