The End is the Beginning

This is the end for the time being, but a new beginning is right around the corner.

Today marks the final blog post as a part of my capstone project. I plan to continue to contribute to this blog in the near future, but there will be a little bit of a break in between. I want to make sure this does not become one of those blogs someone looks at three years from now and sees that this was the last update.

This final entry will stray a bit from what I have done in previous posts. While all of my posts have contained great facts from sources and have had some of my own input in them, I have not yet put out an entire opinion piece. That ends today with a reflection on what I have accomplished with this blog and my thoughts on the journalistic profession as a whole.

What I have Learned
1. Starting a Blog is Easy
One of the first things I learned was how simple it was to create a blog on the internet. I have had several articles published over the years, but they always had to go through a process before being put out there. Blogger.com offers any aspiring journalist/writer/egotistical person the chance to share their articles and opinions to everyone on the internet.

2. COM 3140 was Correct
There are many things that are not being correctly done at Aurora University. In fact, I could probably create a blog with the sole purpose of detailing all the things wrong with AU as a whole.

One thing AU got right was allowing Dann Gire to teach COM 3140, the only true journalism course offered at the school, for the fall semester. I bring this up because a lot of the teachings in that class were reinforced through all of my research.

Research in other courses and for this blog revealed a lot of key points Gire tried to drill into the class of eight people I was in. He made everyone in the class aware of the changes that were happening to the profession and the necessary skills that were needed to make it in the industry.

Gire made me think much more constructively about each of these blog posts. I tried to follow a basic format with the majority of posts based on his teachings. Grab the reader’s attention with a catchy lead, open with the most relevant information while connecting back to the lead, do not lose the reader with unnecessary information, and being concise.

The frequent revisions I made to these posts were a result of me learning how significant editing your own work was from Gire’s class. The majority of my submitted assignments in Gire’s class had to be revised to fit within the journalistic standards he set out for us.

I owe a lot of my improved writing to that class, and this blog is an example of my improvement.

3. Learn about your Desired Profession
As I have stated here before, it is crucial to learn all the details about a possible career before entering the field. I have accomplished that with this blog.

I now feel more prepared to make a mark as a journalist. I see what I need to continue doing to get better. I have identified new responsibilities that the profession now has, and feel as if I have gotten a jump start in developing the necessary skills to be able to carry out those responsibilities.

Writing all of this down in one place helped keep me on track with what information I had to seek through different outlets. Online research gave me a start to all of the essential information I needed. The interview with Jake Kurtz helped put a stamp on all the research I had conducted.

I am in a better place in my profession because of this blog.

Do Not Listen to the Doubters
Commencement is this Sunday, May 8 for me. It is a much anticipated day for me, as a lifelong dream becomes a reality. However, not all is great at this time in the life of an aspiring journalist.

Ill-informed family members (I have plenty), colleagues and friends can use this as an opportunity to ruin your day by asking questions such as: “What’s next?” “Isn’t journalism dying along with the newspaper industry?” “Journalist eh, don’t expect to make any money with that.”

Those types of questions can easily bring your excitement down quite a bit, and I expect to hear similar remarks in the next few weeks. I feel more prepared to handle them, though. I tell myself "Do not listen to them and continue to do what I want to do."

If you are reading this blog, you love to write and want to pursue it in your professional life. When something is a passion, give it your all to be the best you can be. Any profession will involve doubters, but journalism offers more it seems like.

If journalism offers you everything you want in a career, go for it and forget about that wise-ass uncle who wants to ruin your self-esteem to make up for his own shortcomings.

Write, Write and Write some more
One of the most important things that has to come out of this blog for aspiring journalists is that only practice will make you a better writer. It may sound cliché, but I have improved my writing immensely due to the amount of writing I did this academic year.

Writing for the student newspaper and this blog helped me sharpen my ability to be concise, organized and structured with everything that I write. Before, it was a struggle to properly structure each article to adhere to a journalistic style. Now it is much more natural.

Even though journalistic style writing and academic style writing differ, I have found that the journalistic style helps in writing academic papers. Journalistic style writing allows for better narrowing down of topics for a better academic paper. I found it much easier to write research papers this year as opposed to other years because my paper became a lot more focused on one or two topics.

Good Night and Good Luck
Follow your dreams and get to where you want to be with hard work and dedication.

Journalism will be here forever, and potentially grow stronger than ever. Make sure to be an active member in journalism revolution.