I believe in me.

I found the DJ, the rockers, and I'm waiting on a rapper. I'm surprised at how much of my day was consumed by phone calls, e-mails, and so on. And even though I should be used to it by now, it still astonishes me how quickly time flies when I'm doing my work.

I didn't complete everything I had set out to finish today--finish Ogonna's article, follow up with her, and edit the SYP article to style--but since everything is still on schedule, it's okay. I got a lot of material from the DJ and the Drummer I found through the people at WZND, our campus radio station. I also got in touch with the people I needed to get more details out of for the SYP article, which is grrrrreat for progress. I think today's lesson is that nothing is impossible no matter the challenges, especially if you're all coughy and stuffy like I've been for the past few days.

I think the other lesson of today is that no matter how ordinary we may be, we can all do extraordinary things despite our physical, mental, or situational limitations. I'm terrible at math; but writing, drawing, creating, reasoning/ logic, empathizing, memorizing, engineering, invention, and the ability to see past the surface of things are my extraordinary capabilities. The people I interviewed also have their own individual talents: Laroyce Hawkins has self-expression, Ben Swarz has music, and Brady Sullivan has emotional intelligence. It may not sound like much, but if you knew that Laroyce wants to act for a living, Ben wants to be a radio DJ, and Brady wants to help couples make the most of their lives together, it makes all the sense in the world.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what my hopes are for my own career, and I think I want to go with feature writing/ editing, educational publishing, B2B, or custom media. I don't mind doing news--I love to learn and talk about new innovations--but there's something more fulfilling in talking about or appealing to the human interest. B2B and custom media have that element too, but it's also very client-based, which is another one of my loves and individual talents. I really like geting in touch with people and see what they're about, what their likes and dislikes are, and eventually create a close enough bond to the point where they say, "Hey, why not?"

I got a lot of really good interviews that way, and I've also made some pretty big sales in my retail jobs. My [clothing retail] managers didn't like that I was chatting with the customers, but they were also the type of people who felt that the associates should do nothing but "sell" in a false and impersonal way--the same way that some people expect to get a good interview by simply asking questions, demanding answers, and not making their subject feel comfortable. Meeting your quota is important, but if you create a positive rapport with someone and really connect with them, then you create a higher chance of a) making a bigger sale b) creating repeat customers or even a) getting better quotes and b) building a better relationship with the world around you.

I'm pretty confident that journalism, customer service, and sales hold similar qualities. They're all trying to get at something--the headline, the dirt, the sale, or the satisfaction--and I think you can create the biggest difference/ best results by making people feel comfortable through the creation of a genuine rapport. If they think you're there just to sell or get the job done and have no rapport, they won't feel as comfortable and they certainly won't want to work with you. So instead of having a battery list of questions and a rigid agenda, I treat my interviews like conversations.

I started this approach a few months back when I was working for the Vidette. I noticed that a lot of people weren't comfortable with answering point-blank questions, so I started to talk to them like I was getting to know them casually. It worked: the interviews became more interesting and the articles got better. The only part I have to work on now is asking better questions--the kind of questions that cut deep into the mind and bleed buckets of information.

I am a better writer/ interviewer than I was 6 months ago. If you told me in June of last year, "Joanna, you're going to be interviewing people for articles your entire senior year," I would have told you that I didn't know the first thing about journalism. Quite frankly, everyone know a thing or two about journalism, and to put it in its own unattainable echelon is a mistake. Journalism is psychology, research, timeliness, strategy, networking, and following your intuition--all things I have done in previous positions or practice from day to day. I've picked up journo books from the library to become a better journalist, but a lot of them talk about things I already know, which is why I don't understand why the news editors at the Vidette create the perception that non-J students can't write articles as well as J students (one of the many reasons why I left).

Asking questions, failing, and learning from my failures/ accepting them are what have helped me get to where I am. This isn't to say that I haven't considered Medill, Syracuse, NYU, Columbia, U of IN, Goldsmiths, U of IL, Laval, or Stanford for grad, but I will argue that the foundations are better learned and understood through real experiences rather than classrooms (that's how I learned to reformat a computer, remove viruses, install hardware, and create a dual partition).

I don't regret being an English major in the slightest bit, and it shows in what I do every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at UMC. If I had chosen Journalism over English, I don't think I would have had the same sense of diversity, empathy, collaborativeness, gumption, or exposure that the English major gave me. I would have missed out on the 80 page paper I did for Dr. Justice's senior seminar (65 of those pages consisted of research and collation); I would have never learned how to become a better rhetorician; and I would have never refined my web/ graphics skills. All of these things have contributed to how well I do my job, so being an English major was beneficial.

But I also welcome suggestions from my superiors who were Journo majors. Kate and Susan have taught me a lot of techniques in the time I've been there, and I'm going to give them my all in return. I've already accepted that I am forever a student with the career path I am choosing, which is perfectly fine by me.

I'm sure it was well worth it when your boss tells you during a one-on-one Monday meeting, "Out of all the interns we've hired, you are the most confident and the most ready, and that's why we're putting you in the magazine."

That really means a lot in terms of where I am and where I want to be.