Throughout my senior project this semester, it has really helped me understand who I am, who I am meant to truly be, and where I stand as a learner. I feel that it has helped me become a better student and person. I now have a clear understanding of my strengths and weaknesses, two things I was not sure of at the beginning of the year. Thanks to my family and mentor, especially Mrs. Douglas, I pulled out the 21st-century skills I aimed to work on during the semester and improved them.
My greatest strengths, which I knew I had at the beginning of the semester but did not realize were as good as I thought, are my writing and imagination skills. As a mostly fiction writer, I know I have an imagination and good writing skills, but it never occurred to me that some people think my writing is even better than I do. Evidence of my imagination skills in the senior project is the topics I chose for the articles I wrote, especially the short stories.
Aside from that, the evidence of my strong writing skills is the articles themselves and everything I did to make them happen (including brainstorming and rough drafts). What ended up being really surprising for me this semester was that a few people who read my articles in the Courier said I may write better than a few others who have submitted. These are people who are older than me, and I think that is pretty cool. This compliment makes me feel very self-confident about my writing skills. I now truly accept the fact that I am a good writer. If the community thinks so, then I am. My writing and imagination skills will help me in the future by further building my confidence. With this newfound confidence, I think I will finally be ready to publish my first book, or at least for a larger company. They will also help me decide whether I would like to try journalism again sometime.
As most people are, even though we all have strengths, we also have weaknesses. The greatest struggles I taught myself about myself during my senior project were my time management and communication skills. While I do have good time management, I think it can be improved. My communication skills definitely need improvement, since I am normally an introverted person and do not like socializing with many people unless I am comfortable with them. The evidence that shows I need to improve my time management mainly comes from my time log. With deadlines for articles and other school work, I can tell I may have crammed in a few things to complete my time log, such as articles, research, and other Senior Project assignments. I also had to work around my mentor’s schedule, so there were days when we couldn’t meet.
With so many delayed meetings, it was a bit difficult to reach forty hours. On this note, the evidence that proves to me I had a little trouble with communication was the interviews I had to do for a few of my articles: It’s a Golden Day, Home Cooking, and The Holiday Spirit. Since I am an introvert, I usually do not like to communicate with people I do not feel comfortable around. Even though I was talking with my neighbors, every time I went in for an interview, I had this crazy, nervous feeling. However, as the interviews progressed, I warmed up to the neighbors and finally was able to carry on a conversation. The interviews I included in my portfolio show the change I underwent. Looking over them, I can tell I was nervous at first but warmed up later. I still found communication very difficult, though. To address these two issues in the future, I can try two things. For time management, I can put together a journal or planner to write down deadlines and other assignments. For communication, I can start slow, meaning I still talk with just the people in my neighborhood for a while, and then move up to the higher ranks for unknown individuals.
Senior Project has helped me become a better learner in numerous ways, but I will only mention a few. While my communication did not fly off the roof, I still feel that it has improved. I am now more comfortable talking to people I both know and do not know. This sign of evolution helped me write my first interview-based article, It’s a Golden Day, and the one that I think is really good, The Holiday Spirit. Thanks to this, I now feel that I can write and socialize better in school, at home, and at parties.
One of the main things I really learned from this project is that I am not meant to be a journalist. Sure, I take good notes and do well with writing and research, but I feel it just doesn’t suit my true inner writer. What I learned is that my inner writer is a fiction writer, not a journalist. While I did enjoy journalism a lot, it just is not who I am. This learning stretch will hopefully help me get a good job as a fiction author or writer in the future, not as a nonfiction writer. I have a very diverse imagination—something else I learned—and I should use it to create my own morals and adventures, not to retell someone else’s story. I want to be original, not unoriginal. I do love helping people and including them every chance I get, and I certainly would not mind writing another article one day. I just think I meant to be more of a fiction entertainer rather than a nonfiction one.
Overall, the Art of Journalism has been a wonderful experience for me, but I do not think it is something I will strive for. The whole point of my project was to discover if I liked nonfiction writing or creative writing more. My essential question was “How is journalism different from creative writing?” I found the answers to all my questions, and they were equally positive and negative.
One of the main challenges I faced, aside from the communication, was the deadlines. The deadlines really stressed me out, and I do not like to be stressed. They always made me wonder what would happen if I did not achieve them, or how on earth I actually got everything done by the deadline. Sure, authors have deadlines too, but this again points out that I am more of a creative writer than a journalist. I like to sit and let my imagination take me wherever it goes. Does it take me to a new world? What is this new world? Who lives here? Why do they live here? What is the history behind this world? These are all things I can answer creatively. I really do not see my inner self unless I am writing fiction rather than nonfiction. This is the main thing I tell myself every day.
I did like journalism, but it definitely is not going to be my profession, and I want to thank my senior project for teaching me this.
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