JOUR-61 Self-Reflection
Throughout this semester of taking JOUR-61, my biggest takeaway in how to write like a journalist is that my writing has to be concise, objective and impeccable in grammar, spelling and punctuation.
By the end of the class, some of the writing skills that I best mastered were how to condense a lot of information into direct sentences, how to properly write in AP style and how to write an effective lead. Overall, I believe I became most proficient in how to write an effective lead.
One of the biggest challenges that I faced in the class was to make my grammar flawless. Specifically, the use of commas after the abbreviation of a state and stopping my use of the Oxford comma were the most difficult habits to adopt.
In addition to the skills I most had trouble with, a writing still that I feel I still need to practice is attributions. Sourcing an attribution and how to best deliver an indirect attribution are things that I feel like I would benefit from more practice. I also feel I need more repetition on how to write for public relations since this is a writing skill I have never executed before.
I was unaware of how to write in AP style in general prior to this class. I had to learn and adapt to the rules on attributions, paragraphs, abbreviations, capitalizations and numbers. Furthermore, I did not know about the inverted pyramid and alternative writing structures before I was taught them in class.
To practice these newly learned skills I will get into the habit of always referring to the AP style cheat sheet while writing. Another practice that I will implement to improve my writing is to constantly have a thesaurus on hand when I am composing a piece. Lastly, because I am very opinionated and would like to go into sports broadcast journalism, I will continue to modify my thinking and statements to be more objective to translate to my writing.
The writing style that I enjoyed the most was the interview. I aspire to conduct many interviews in my career, so I found this topic the most useful and the one I had the most fun writing. I can see myself in the future using the sandwich method to interview some of the biggest sports stars to then produce an engaging article.
In comparison to the interview, I felt like the writing style that was the most difficult for me to learn was public relations. The reason why I found this the most challenging to learn is because it felt different than the previous writing styles this semester, specifically in the way that you are promoting something so I could be more subjective.
The ways I learned AP style were through the lessons, quizzes and the feedback I would receive on my writing assignments. To become proficient in AP style I found it helpful to read articles from The New York Times, and to refer to my AP style cheat sheet numerous times so the rules would become more ingrained in my mind.
To conclude this self-reflection, while I was answering each question I had to look back at all of my writing assignments and think comprehensively about each element. This is why self-reflection is a useful tool, simply for the fact that it made me analyze my past mistakes and successes to best formulate how to keep thriving in my writing. The same principles apply to when I watch film for my basketball games, and the same prosperous outcome is desired.
