Sunday
Sunday afternoon, I arrived at campus around 2ish. The WJMC staff was super welcoming and pointed out where me and my family needed to go. I checked in with the person, who gave me my credential for the week, as well as my key card for the dorms and the full schedule. They then told me which dorm building I would be staying in for the week. Inside the building, there was a small lobby area, with couches, and chairs, a little table with an iron on it. When you first walk in there was extra key chains, toilet paper and water bottles. Will say, the building was super nice, the only downside is that it has one elevator, so its a long wait.
Since I had my suitcase and bags with me, I waited for the elevator with a few others. I was one the sixth floor, no way I’m walking up stairs to get there. Surprisingly the elevator came pretty fast, which was nice. When I got the dorm room, I was sharing the room with one other girl, Gabby, and then we shared a bathroom with two others, Olive and Cassidy. The dorm room itself was pretty roomy for a college dorm room. It had two closets, two desk, and two beds on opposite sides of the room. My roommate was already there, so she had all her stuff together already. The program gave us bedding and towels for the week, which was nice. I did bring my own blanket which I recommend doing. As sometimes it can get cold in the dorm. I would also recommend your own pillow. The pillow they gave us still worked for a week it just wasn’t the most comfortable.
With the connected bathroom, there was a huge sink area, with two sinks and a long mirror. At the back of the bathroom, there was a door, that lead to the shower and toilet. Not that exciting for a bathroom, but its a bathroom. Will say the shower was really low pressure but worked great. I think it was nice to share a bathroom with only four people and not a whole floor.
Meeting my Color Group leaders
After unpacking a little, I headed down to the Hubb, where I was going to meet my color group leaders. The Hubb also has a arcade in it, which is fire. I do wish we got more time to go down there and hang out. One of the WJMC staff lead me to where my color group was, they had a little table set up. There my two leaders, April and Reaghan. April was our FA, and Reaghan was our junior FA. They went over all the safety stuff, got my number, put me in a Gorup chat. As well as more, they told me where to meet so we could walk to our first ever color group meeting. I also got my notebook that we will use to take notes down and write in for the conference.
Color Group Meeting #1
In our first color group meeting, we went over more things about the program. We also got to know each other. April told us about a few things on how things will work as well. We also talked about what to expected tonight at the dinner and a little bit about the guest speaker. Then certain color Gorups were suppose to speak to the speaker, open for the speaker or close for the speaker. Our color group was suppose to ask a question so we picked who that would be.
Dinner + First Speaker
After the color group meeting, we headed to the Johnson center, where we would be eating dinner and listening to the opening speaker. My color was sat at two round table on the left side of the room at the front. Pretty sweet seats if I do say so. For dinner it was a self-severed, with rice, meat, some desserts too. In the back of the room, they had drinks too. There were lemonade, water and tea.
After a few minutes of eating and talking with people at my table. The opener for the speaker got on the stage to introduce the speaker. Our first speaker was Savannah Behrmann, she is a Politics and Congress Reporter. Savannah also went to WJMC when she was in high school. Savannah talked about her high school experiences, how she got into politics, how she tells stories, some advice for us and also Ai.
A few of my takeaways from her speech was she moves to tell the truth no matter how hard that can be. Ai wont fully replace journalism, and a lot of Journalist use it as a tool. If you want to be a journalist, you need to find things you like to capture and stop caring about what others think. She also talked a lot about finding your why. Finding your why means, why do you want to be a journalist, why are you capturing this story. I really loved her take on her career and all the advice from her. I could write for days on her impact and my take aways from her speech.
Quotes:
“The best stories you can report on are the ones you like the most” – Savannah Behrmann “Learn how to do it all” – Savannah Behrmann “It’s not my job to make them like me” – Savannah Behrmann “Don’t take it personally. Be the outlier” – Savannah Behrmann
Color Group meeting #2
After dinner was done, we headed back to the building where we would have our second meeting. In that meeting, we introduced ourselves again, we talked about the speaker, then we leaned about Personal/Professional image and networking. In our Workbook, we compared what we thought the differences and similarities are to Personal and Professional image. We also wrote down our thoughts on our personal image and our professional image, as well as some benefits and challenges between them.
We also worked on our networking, we went over an elevator pitch, what should be in, then we practiced saying them to each other. Just saying that was the most awkward and forced conversations I’ve had. It was really useful, but we were all tired and practicing elevator pitches it just so forced. After all that we finally turned in for the night.
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