Before coming to Penn State, I knew that I wanted to double major in Theatre & Broadcast Journalism. After taking about 2 or 3 Communications courses, I realized that I had lost my passion in Theatre and fell in love with Journalism. Coming into COMM 465, I thought it was interesting that we would attend the lectures during the week and then go out & use this useful information to create our packages. The lectures were really helpful and having the PowerPoints on Canvas helped even more. After our first project, we realized how important utilizing the lectures were and we grew even more as a class after each project. Being given the groups of 5 worked out really good in my favor but I liked how we were able to pick our next groups in the following projects. We were given the best of both worlds – being able to learn how to work in an unknown environment with new people and then being able to choose our next set of group partners. I think that I worked equally with teams that I was a part of but it was easier when there was only 2 of us.
I found it really rewarding when we would show our presentations to the class and got to discuss it. I felt proud being able to show my classmates the hard work I had put into my packages and allowing them to share what they had liked & disliked about it. Hearing what my classmates had to say about my work was really helpful and it was one of my favorite parts about the course. Sometimes hearing something from your professor isn’t always the same as hearing it from a classmate so I think that was a very important part of my COMM 465 experience.
Overall, COMM 465 was a great class and Dr. Z really made me realize how much I love Journalism & how much I want to be one.