{"id":1268,"date":"2021-01-08T22:07:38","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T22:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2021-01-09T19:17:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T19:17:23","slug":"a-seat-at-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/2021\/01\/08\/a-seat-at-the-table\/","title":{"rendered":"A seat at the table"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span>My biggest takeaway from the project is that I actually do have valuable storytelling and journalistic skills to contribute. This might sound silly, but in college it can feel like you are slogging away your life working towards some inconceivable end goal. I was sitting through classes about photojournalism and web design, and writing articles for classes while editing for my school paper, but it was as if I\u2019d forgotten why I started doing all of those things in the first place. This program woke me up from what felt like a strange and endless sleepwalk. I suddenly remembered why I was honing all of these skills in the first place, and I wasn\u2019t just some lost 21-year-old anymore. I became a professional (sort of?) with an understanding of media and journalism and the skills to back it up. This isn\u2019t to say I don\u2019t have so much more to learn, but it was nice to see something culminate out of my efforts beyond some abstract grade in a class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>There are so many takeaways from this week that are shifting the way I think about my future in general. While my passion is still to work in social justice and human rights, I\u2019d also love to work in audio journalism and be able to tell important stories that way. I like the idea of using Headliner more in order to create a polished representation of my work, and I think I might start making an effort to learn some basic Adobe cloud skills (at least in Audition and Premiere) so that I can do some work in audio and tell stories that matter. I\u2019ve been publishing articles and taking photos for a while now, but this is the first time something I\u2019ve created has felt like proof that I really do have what it takes to be a journalist and social advocate. More importantly, I realized that being those things doesn\u2019t have to look like just one thing. There are many ways to share stories, and many ways to advocate for minority communities. I learned that I don\u2019t have to narrow myself in some box or category because I think that is what I should be doing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Most importantly, I\u2019ve learned that I\u2019m not alone in this. I never realized when I became a part of this project that I\u2019d be getting a found family out of it. Not only is it amazing to be surrounded by journalists and intellectuals, people who have interests and passions in many of the things that I do, but to feel like there is a place for you among those people is more than I could have ever hoped for. The concept of networking can feel like some foreign and faraway thing when you\u2019re in college. No one knows your name or your drive, and you haven\u2019t had the chance to establish yourself so it can be easy to think \u201cwell, what do I have to offer?\u201d but I\u2019ve learned the answer to that is so much. I have so much to offer. Learning and growing doesn\u2019t have to be mutually exclusive with being confident in the skills and talents you\u2019ve learned thus far. I\u2019ve learned that it\u2019s okay to believe in yourself and say, \u201cYes, I am good at this thing even though I have room to learn and grow,\u201d and that knowledge is more valuable than anything I could have ever created here at Next Gen\u2026 although a multimedia piece is pretty amazing too!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My biggest takeaway from the project is that I actually do have valuable storytelling and journalistic skills to contribute. This might sound silly, but in college it can feel like you are slogging away your life working towards some inconceivable end goal. I was sitting through classes about photojournalism and web design, and writing articles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":26,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flnewsroom2021.nextgenradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}