September - The Second Year Begins

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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Once more I am throwing myself into the second (and final) year of my Journalism – Print program.  The courses this year are, Online Newspaper Practicum, Newspaper Practicum, World History and Politics, Video Production, Law and Ethics, Ezine and as elective, I chose Life Writing, an online course in memoir writing.

The four months of “summer break” were difficult, financially speaking.  The recession is still roaring and students in general have had a hard time finding jobs.  Many employers want students because they are young, with no physical or emotional limits and naïve about labour rights – none of which describes me.  So I only had about six weeks of employment.  Luckily I did manage to stretch my grant money to tide me over until I could borrow more money from the government to continue on.

The first day at college proved the old adage to me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  I no longer felt the panic I had this time last year.  I did not lose any of my possessions.  Nor did I care if I was stared at.  The college was familiar and the faces were familiar.  At least 30% of the first year’s class did not return either because they failed or found something else they wanted to study more. 

The ones who remained had made a commitment to the course and to the work.  This became obvious with the first publishing of the College Newspaper.  Everyone just went out and got their story in on time as it should be done.  Prof Norman was our Editor/Instructor and he remarked how pleased (and surprised) he was that the stories came in without a hitch.  Nothing worse for an editor than to have an empty space in a newspaper, and a story that is due and does not come in to occupy it.  He reminded us thoroughly that we had better complete our assignments because if we didn’t he would have to do them, and he didn’t like doing them.

For this year I was accepted as an editorialist on the newspaper, which was good because I prefer to opinionate than dig out news college students might want to read.  The students who were in the class with me were the most responsible and hard-working students, and the ones I had so much trouble with last year either had not returned or ended up in the other of two classes that had been split 30 students each.  My standby partner Joanne had ended up in that other class, but I did not panic because the possibilities in my class looked good.

My first editorial for the College Newspaper was, in fact, on group work and the perils thereof.  I was relieved to discover that many people, even the ones with solid friendships and a great deal in common were upset at how little guidance or oversight came from the instructors and how tempers could be frayed if one or more of their friends slacked off.

This year we were going to produce another Ezine, but this time not as a group but as individuals.  Prof Davita, who ran the second year ezine class said she had so much trouble with groups last year that this time she decided we would work on our own.  We could choose our topic and had 10 pages in which to fill it up with feature articles and appropriate images, as well as design the front and back cover. 

I decided the smartest topic I could pick for my ezine was the college’s animation department.  I got the same part-time job again, as Studio Monitor, so I would be there a lot. The college is somewhat famous for the animators it has produced and I could find four articles to write about the program, the directors, the students and students who have gone on to become highly regarded in the animation industry.  All my information and people were right there on the college grounds and I didn’t have to run all over the city hunting them down.  It would be so easy.  Little did I know….

I was further buoyed by the possibilities of group work when I sat at a table desk in the Video Production class and two of the other younger students joined me.  The previous year younger students avoided me like the plague and sat at my table desk only if those were the last places left.  And then they avoided communicating with me whenever they could and either whispered among themselves or leaned over to other younger students at other table desks and chatted with them.

Dinah, who was young (19) but sincere and dedicated sat down automatically beside me, and another young woman, Melanie, joined us.  Our instructor Prof Colette told us that we would need to be in groups of four because we would have to be a news production team in this class.  One video camera would be allowed per group and each of us had to take turns being the writer, interviewer, camera operator and editor on the team.  Dianne and I had already worked in several groups and automatically agreed to be with each other and Melanie, whom I knew to be a responsible participant, agreed to be in our group too.

Later on that week, the three of us again sought each other out to share a table desk in the Law & Ethics class and proceeded to work on several in-class projects as a group.  We also sat together in the World History class.  I became relieved that the process of finding responsible group members came so easily this time and thought my group work problems were settled.  My online class this year would need group work but my online class last year, Cybernation, had gone extraordinarily well and it would obviously be a lot better picking participants because no one knew each other and so had no favourites to choose. 

Everything was in order.  What could possibly go wrong?