Tutorials

I thought I would write a conjoined blog post about both the tutorials I have thus far attended. The first one I was a little nervous for because like every first class attend you don't know anyone, and you have no clue what to expect. It took me forever to find the classroom as I hadn't really been to this part of UQ before but luckily I was greeted by a friendly face who I soon learnt would be my tutor. It is very helpful when the tutors take the time out of their lesson to allow the students to get to know each other, because it is extremely important. Being an extremely shy girl when I don't know anyone, I probably would have continued on the whole semester without having the courage to introduce myself to the people next to me. But luckily, we commenced the tutorial with a getting-to-know-the-people-around-you exercise which really helped us open up and it made things a lot less tense. I am finding that Journalism is extremely interesting because it is so different to my other courses. The assignments for one thing are so different and interesting and are tasks that are almost fun to do. When I first learned that our on-going piece of assessment for Journalism would be blogging I was happily surprised.

Before this course I have only had one other encounter with blogging, but that was in grade 8 and wasn't really that exciting. But there is something so fascinating with journalism and blogging. I guess it is the freedom to have you're own opinion and knowing that people would read it. Even though I have only had 2 tutorials so far, I have learnt so much already. I have realised so much about my current relationship with Journalism and Communication and these are lessons that will influence me for the rest of my life. The most dominant lesson that has impacted me is how small my world knowledge is. I am so consumed with what is happening around me that I don't take the time to watch the news and thus I am oblivious to what is happening in this big wide world. I think I used to pull away from watching the news because it was always so depressing and I didn't think it had much relevance to me so I found no reason to watch it. But as I have grown up I realise that there is more to this life than just me- crazy I know, but I think often we forget that simple little fact. Even just beginning both tutorials with news that has been happening around the world has pushed me to actually go out and listen/read the news. Because for the past two tutorials I haven't been up-to-date with what has been happening and some of the things are really basic-knowledge things. The news has become so much more interesting and I think I have just been exposing myself to the wrong type of news. I have only been exposed in the past few years to social types of media such as magazines, entertainment news, Facebook and so on, which only serve to give me news that might interest me, more like gossip news then real stuff. But since this realisation of my limited world knowledge I have pushed myself to visiting the more public media, ABC, BBC etc to get the real news. It fascinates me, even if it is depressing, to hear the real stories. I think that's why I got into Anthropology and Journalism as my majors because to me they work so well together.

My original idea of a career was to travel and write about everything to do with humans. Behaviour, events, religions, races, different cultures and societies and to just allow others to understand the real stuff happening around the world that they might not hear about through entertainment media. I want to dig deeper than the superficial news and to give a voice to the voiceless. At the beginning of this course, I have to admit I wasn't very sure that Journalism is the right path for me, but it is getting more and more interested and at the moment it's probably one of my most interesting classes. The assignments aren't just a couple of 2000 word essays but instead it is engaging with different types of journalism and communication. It is practical and real-life journalism that we are experiencing and it gives us a taste of what we are getting into. I quite enjoy attending journalism tutorials, because you learn so much in such a short amount of time. You are updated with all the latest news that you may not have known about, and there are so many interesting lessons embedded into one tutorial such as headlines, the importance of the picture chosen for an article and so on.  Overall,  JOUR1111 has exceeded my expectations and I am really enjoying it. It has sparked in me an interest for news and I look forward to what I learn next!