Stressed out was an understatement.
On the day of my first story, I was freaking out. I was second-doubting myself for going into Journalism in the first place. I felt as if I was unworthy of my spot in the program and I felt that after this day I was definitely going to drop out.
Let me explain. The majority of you readers probably don’t know what story day is. It’s a day that occurs every other week in my program, where the student would have to either be given a topic to write about or seek one out. Then the clock starts. Journalism students would have a minimum of five hours (depending if there was a mandatory lecture that day) which may sound like a lot of time, but trust me when I say it is indeed not. You soon realized that it is two hours until the deadline and you have been wasting time wandering the mall attempting to find people to interview.
Definitely not a true story, by the way.
Story days have specific requirement such as requiring a specific number of quotes from specific kinds of people (i.e. professionals, random citizens, audience members of a press conference and so on and so forth), requiring self-shot photos with captions and much more. Obtaining these can be very difficult unless you became lucky that day.
My experience for story day was anxiety inducing to say the least. I unfortunately had woken up at 10 AM that day, the start time of the press conference we were covering.
I rushed to school on the verge of a panic attack, forgetting my laptop at home in the process. This in turn led me to wasting more time and forced me to check out a laptop from “the cage”, a room in the Roger Communication Centre designated for signing out a variety of electronics.
I reached the press conference very very late but I made do with the quotes I got. Soon after I found myself sitting in some corner of Kerr Hall, writing at the speed of light after collecting some subpar civilian quotes on the street.
I finished my article minutes before the deadline, leaving me no time to edit. After submitting my amalgamation of quotes and information, I thought I was done for.
I sincerely believed I was going to fail the assignment and be kicked out of Journalism for good.
Although, that fortunately was not the case.
A couple weeks later was the day we all dreaded. Feedback day.
We all groaned and quivered as our lab professors slowly handed back assignments. As I received my own sheet, I took a deep breathe before turning it over to the mark side. Slowly but surely though, I did it.
My eyes widened.
I gasped.
The mark was not half bad. Sure it wasn’t above average, although it was much better than I thought it would be.
With a sigh of relief, I relaxed.
Until I heard that the next story day was the next week. Then the cycle of panic began all over again.