With little to no experience, I came out of my sophomore year with journalism being only something I considered majoring in, but after the summer of 2023, I went into my junior year with journalism being exactly what I wanted to do.

This summer I attended The Donald W. Carson Journalism Diversity Workshop at the University of Arizona. This event lasted six days (from June 4th-9th) and took place from around 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., at the School of Journalism in the Marshall building.

We started every day with a meeting in one of the classrooms. We went over the game plan for the day and talked about what was going on in the news, specifically concerning our theme for the workshop – food insecurity. I was extremely nervous on the first day, but all of the students and teachers made the environment comfortable; by the second day, I was excited to be back.

We started the first day by learning how to take portraits. I got paired with a girl named Gabriella, and later I got to interview her and write her bio that was seen on Medium, the website we used to write our articles. She was only a year younger than me, and we shared an interest in Taylor Swift, the whole group was full of Swifties actually! We instantly clicked, and by the end of the week, I was sad to say goodbye to everyone. There were 6 students, including me, and we all became a good bunch of reporters. Between the lunch breaks, walks, and scavenger hunts around the campus, we all had fun.

After our introduction day, things kicked off and we had our first lesson, a drone flying workshop. I’ve never flown a drone before, so it was an interesting experience to learn about the technicalities, and how to use drone footage in journalism. Later in the day, we had another photojournalism lesson, but this time it was with cameras. I learned a lot about the basics that helped me work with my personal camera. We took pictures of the turtle pond and each other, but my photos didn’t turn out the greatest. However, it was my first time, so it can only go up from there!

Throughout the week we had an opportunity to meet with journalists from ProPublica, AZPM, and the Arizona Daily Star. I learned about the different fields of journalism and the different formats. We got to learn about how to record videos (we made a TikTok during this session!), how to record audio and basic writing.

Coming into the workshop with almost no experience meant that I was learning everything about journalism for the first time. I learned the importance of asking for the correct spelling of the interviewee’s name, the types of questions to ask, and how meaningful it can be to ask a simple, “How are you doing?”

For our articles, we each wrote an opinion piece, and all together we wrote two articles: one about the campus pantry at the U of A, and the other about the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. We interviewed a public relations manager from the food bank, and staff members at the campus pantry. We took a tour of the campus pantry when they were closed, and it was here that we got to show off our audio and video skills.

The last day of the workshop was chaos. The constant chatter, keyboards clacking, and chairs swiveling, were all that could be heard for the day. It was hard to meet our deadlines because we were all so tired of staring at the computer screens, but made it! Amidst all this chaos, we went down 4th Avenue to get lunch at BOCA. I don’t travel around that area often, but I got very comfortable with the campus and its surrounding areas during that week; I loved going to new places and trying new food!

When we got back, it was crunch time. It was a long process of writing, looking at the notes our instructors gave, and then fixing what we wrote. I had never written an article before, so I took all the feedback I was given and tried my best to adapt to the style. I was so used to essay-style paragraphs, but in the news, they love white space on the pages. By the end of the day, I felt confident about my article. For my opinion piece, I wrote about why every school needs a community food pantry.

With our articles being published only minutes before our families and teachers arrived, we gathered in a room to show them off. We all went up to show off and present our opinion pieces, and one of our instructors, Pate McMichael, said a few words about each student. Jessica Retis, the director of the School of Journalism, gave her closing remarks, we received certificates, and it was time to say goodbye.

This experience changed me, and I came out of it feeling like a true journalist. It made me excited to go back to school and write for my school’s newspaper, and I felt well-equipped with everything I needed to know.