This semester has been a roller coaster ride for me, to say the least. I am a senior Broadcast Journalism major and I am graduating from Penn State University in only one semester.
Realizing that this is my final collegiate year was an extremely eye-opening experience in more ways than one. I felt the need to do as much as possible because I will probably never get these opportunities again. I will be concluding my term as Chapter President of Alpha Xi Delta in a week and I was also promoted three times this semester at my B94.5 internship. I was always extremely busy everyday of the week but knew that I didn’t want to give up any amazing opportunities before I graduate.
Another aspect of this semester that I am very grateful for is my COMM 465 Television Reporting class. I was extremely excited to take this course since I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do with my future after graduation in the broadcast field. I was hopeful that this course would help me to get a better sense of who I am as a person and lead me into the right direction and it did.
COMM 465 was my most rigorous course of the semester, but also my favorite. Dr. Zhong did an amazing job of propelling us in the right direction from the beginning. He always led helpful lectures, gave us advice for our packages and helped to give all of his students the motivation to be creative and learn from our mistakes rather than dwelling on them. Having something due, whether it was a package, blog, weekly story, etc., helped me to stay interested an invested in the class every week as well.
The two most difficult part of the class for me were choosing package ideas and thinking about my stories at a different angle. Choosing package stories is extremely difficult because although there are so many news stories everyday, it is hard to choose one that speaks to you and that you could make into your own, creative package. Also, even when you have chosen your story idea, it is hard to figure out what you want to film, what questions you want to ask your interviewees and what main point you want to explain through storytelling.
One of my favorite parts of the course was learning more about the television industry and figuring out if the industry is for me or not. I enjoyed coming to class, learning new things everyday and getting beneficial hands on experience that many students do not have access to. I really enjoyed editing the footage I captured and finding new and creative ways to make them into an eye-appealing package. This helped me learn more about Adobe Premiere and I would love to work with it again in the future. I also found that towards the end of the semester, I was thinking about new and innovative ways to create stand-ups or matched action shots to drive home my main points of the story.
In conclusion, although I thoroughly enjoyed COMM 465 and learned a lot from Dr. Zhong as my professor, I think I need more television reporting (i.e. Centre County Report) skills to be confident enough to want to be a reporter. Unfortunately the semester is almost over but I enjoyed this class so much that I am most likely going to look into finding more ways that I can create packages in the future and gain even more experience. I learned so much from this class and I am so grateful that I was able to be taught in such a hands-on way because it propelled me to the next level with my work.
Dr. Zhong’s Comm 465 Section 2 class