I could not be more thankful to have had the opportunity to take COMM 465 this semester. I am not going to lie, I was quite nervous taking a class that was filled with a majority of seniors, as I am a junior, and the intense workload. However, now looking back on the semester and seeing how much I have learned, I do not regret my decision at all. I have learned so many essential skills in this class, but there are three skills that I believe will really help me as I continue my time throughout college and in the future within my career choice.
One of the biggest things I learned in this class is to never say no to more footage. In my second package, my group focused on the farmer’s market downtown. After my group settled on what we thought was enough footage, we quickly came to realize while editing the next day that we had barely enough footage, footage that did not come out right and footage that we just did not like. It was too late to go back and record more since we waited until the next day, so we had to work with what we had. After creating that package, I made a promise to myself to always get double the footage I believe I need and to always preview my footage immediately after taking the shots. Until creating my own packages this semester, I never realized how much footage goes into creating something just as short as a two minute news story. Overshooting is key when wanting to create a successful package.
To continue, another big thing I learned in this class is to really focus on my tone, emotion, attitude, speed and pronunciation when anchoring, doing a stand-up or even reading any type of news story. This lesson for me really came to light when we were given children’s stories in class and asked to read them aloud. One of the quotes from Dr. Zhong’s lecture that immediately stuck out to me after performing this task was to, “read our scripts with the same emotion that we would read a children’s book.” From that point on, I saw reading a script in a totally different way. I realized how important it was to express my personality through my voice in order to keep my audience engaged.
Finally, the biggest thing I learned in this class is to never give up. Dr. Zhong said on the first day that this class was going to be a lot of work, and boy was he right. There were a lot of times I wanted to give up, specifically during the third project. The footage was appearing blurry, some footage had no sound and the files of the interviews would not download to my laptop with sound. However, I knew I could not give up. I realized that sometimes we are faced with challenges we do not expect, but it is the way we react to them that means the most.
I have gained a lot of knowledge from this class and I could not be more grateful. I plan to use these skills throughout the rest of my time at Penn State. I hope to join organizations such as PSN News next semester and further enhance my current skills. In the future, I would love to hold the position as a news anchor. In all, I will continue to always use the skills I have learned in COMM 465.
On this day of class, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to pursue a job as a news anchor.