Over the summer of 2017, I was fortunate to gain many experiences through running my own business in Oklahoma with a company called Southwestern Advantage. While in Oklahoma, I learned many valuable skills in the business cycle, as well as communication skills.

To begin, Southwestern Advantage is a 160-year old company that has helped college students earn their way through college by selling educational products. It originally started after the Civil War, helping veterans returning from the war support their families by going door-to-door selling Bibles. Later, it transitioned to focus on helping college students by going door-to-door selling educational books and websites.

Southwestern Advantage has taught me a lot over a short period of 3 months and the lessons I learned have continued with me past the summer. This internship taught me not only how to run my own business, but also many valuable life lessons, such as being in the moment, having an optimistic outlook, understanding the core fundamentals of communication between people, learning self-discipline through time management and sticking to a schedule, and much more.

With this internship, I learned how to run my own business from learning about the products, going door-to-door and connecting with the families I sold to, utilizing social media to connect to the community, counting inventory and then personally delivering the products and ensuring each customer understood how to use it. I learned how the business cycle works through this internship, and though I am not going into a business major or field, knowing the fundamentals of how a business works will better help me to understand how my field, journalism works, because in the end, it is also a business. Because I learned how to use social media to better connect with the community and be able to be more accessible, I was able to make connections and promote myself and the product so that families could better understand about the idea. Through Southwestern Advantage, I learned how to better communicate the idea of the educational books and websites I was selling and better understand the family’s needs so as to help them reach their educational goals.

Gabi “The Bookgirl” Szymanowska

ALTMEDIA

Writing for a local, weekly newspaper in the heart of Sydney

During my time studying abroad in Sydney, Australia, I had the fortune of choosing a study abroad program that not only let me study at The University of Sydney, but also included me working as an intern at a local news organization called AltMedia.

AltMedia produces a weekly newspaper every Thursday that is in “charge of Sydney’s busiest urban precincts.” The newspaper produces independent content from the inner city since 1995 with it’s viewing audience being the largest concentration of young people between the ages of 20 and 44.

So, through this internship I gained experience of working not only at a local level, but also at an international level. Using what I learned in my Intercultural Communications class, I was able to effectively perform the tasks that every journalist must do: set up interviews, perform interviews either in person or over the phone and write articles in such a way that it seemed as if I were a local myself.

In total, I produced 11 articles for the newspaper that ranged in topic from the effects of what building a new transportation line had on local businesses to the efforts of cleaning up the local river and how childcare workers aren’t being paid enough.

In addition to working independently on my articles, I also had the opportunity to work as a team with another intern in getting to know the local businesses and contacting them as to whether they would like to be in a local guide with specials for the area. Working with another intern was great, especially as the skills I learned from that will apply to future parts of the job, as journalists today aren’t always working alone.

I think I said it best in this excerpt from the blog I kept while studying abroad in Australia about my experience working with AltMedia:

“I am so grateful for all the lessons I have learned through my internship. I’m not going to lie, it was a tough journey for me. It wasn’t at all what I expected and, in many ways, opened my eyes to the journalism world and to the work world in general … The feedback I received from my supervisor and the critiques I have been given have pushed me to do better and reflecting back, I have grown as a journalist. So, thank you. Thank you for teaching me lessons that truly helped me grow.”

For more about my time in Sydney check out: CCI Global Scholars: Studying Abroad in Sydney, Australia

General News and Breaking News: Two sides of my internship coin

Back during the summer of 2019, I was blessed with the opportunity to do an internship with the Knoxville News Sentinel. I started in June and for three months until August, I worked alongside fellow reporters and interns covering local, state and national news.

While my workweek went from Tuesday to Saturday, my weeks at Knox News were never the same and they were definitely not boring. I learned a lot from everyone there — from the advice I gained from fellow reporters to the critique my editors gave, I came out of the experience with a new outlook on what I wanted to do with my journalism career.

It definitely was the most challenging internship I’d had in the journalism field, but with every challenge came the reward of improving my skills.

So, here are a few key findings from my experience:

1. Breaking news isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay

Because I ended up working on Saturdays, I was put on the breaking news beat. What this meant for me was that I spent a lot of time combing through social media posts, refreshing my email inbox for news releases, listening to a police scanner and looking for any lead that ‘bleeds.’ While most of my Saturdays there were one or two other people in the office for a bit, I did spend a lot of time alone. The breaking news beat is tough in that way that you do write a lot about accidents, deaths and more, most of the time. Occasionally, you get stories like ‘Targetgedden’ when all the stores across the U.S. seemed to have a system malfunction at the same time.

But while a lot of the stories were hard to write about, I learned what it meant to have tough skin and not let it get to you. The breaking news beat also really reinforced timeliness and accuracy, because although I wanted to be first to break a story, I also always double and triple checked to make sure what I had written was correct.

2. Speak up if you have a story idea

Although I do have strong opinions on certain subjects and am not afraid to speak up when I feel something needs to be said, I wasn’t as forthcoming with story ideas to my editor at first. Mostly because I was a bit intimated by my editor, but also because as a new intern, I wasn’t sure if the ideas I had would be good enough. Turns out, they were.

By the end of my internship, I felt more comfortable with my editor to approach her with story ideas that ended up being really great articles that were informative and well-written. Through my time with Knox News, I learned that even though ideas might not be completely worked through when you bring them to your editor, they can help make it a more concrete story idea.

3. As a general news intern, always be open to any story idea …

I had a blast with the stories I was assigned. Don’t get me wrong, some of the articles I wrote weren’t what I’m interested in writing about at all. But each story I wrote, I hoped would make an impact on the community. Each story I took on — from feature stories to medical to education — each one was interesting to write about because I learned so much. Which then I could pass on to others. I think the best part about being a general news intern was the variety of topics I could cover. No two stories were the same and each one I improved my writing skills and my storytelling skills through.

4. But also know when to let a story go if it doesn’t work out

But with taking on so many different stories, I learned that not all of them are going to work out. In fact, I had a few that just didn’t pan out, which was a disappointment. But, sometimes that’s for the best, because a better story will come along. There’s no point in continuing to pursue a story just for the sake of producing content if it’s not really working out. That’s something that has definitely helped me as Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Beacon. I get a ton of story ideas that look like they’d make for great content, but because of my time at Knox News, I know now what to look for when it comes to stories that may actually do well.

5. Always, always, always take the opportunity to learn and network from others

The last key aspect that I learned from working at Knox News is the importance of learning as much as you can from those you work with and taking the time to network outside of the workplace.

One of the first few weeks there, one of the editors asked us all to hang out for a drink where we could ask her questions about the field, her experience and any advice she could give us. I really valued that opportunity because it did open the floor to allow us to feel comfortable to approach her with personal questions about the experience of being a journalist. This also made it easier for us to approach her later at work if we had a problem with something or needed to bounce an idea off of her. It made the internship experience that much better and helped to prepare us for the future.

Likewise, having the opportunity to talk with other reporters outside of work at News & Brews and hanging out was great. Not only did it help us bond, but also allowed me to have honest conversations with other reporters about what they liked/disliked or had known before coming into the field. It gave me perspective.

Overall, my time with Knox News was one of the best experiences I could have asked for because of the people I worked with. While journalism is a stressful field because of tight deadlines, breaking news and the overall need to be accurate when reporting and not make mistakes, working with other journalists who you get along with is the best part. It’s what made my summer so impactful.

Looking forward to finding my own newsroom to be a part of in the near future!

 

Southeastern Journalism Conference

The last two years I have been fortunate enough to be recommended by faculty of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media to participate in the Southeastern Journalism Conference.

“Since its beginning as an idea of Alabama professor David Sloan, the Southeast Journalism Conference has worked hard to meet its two original purposes: 1) to encourage greater interest in student journalism and 2) to create closer ties among journalism schools in the Southeast United States.”

Last year, the conference was held at MTSU and a group of students from the University of Tennessee participated for the first time in the on-site competitions that are held. I went as the feature/news photographer and was more than happy to place 2nd in the competition seeing as it was my first on-site competition for photography.

The Daily Beacon garners awards at SEJC 2019

However, when I was asked to go back this year as the only returning member from last year’s group, I wanted nothing more than to do better than last year and get first place. Not only would it show my photography skills improved but also my own personal growth. As such, this year the competition was at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, MS. The drive there was long, but it was worth it.

Unlike last year where we were told to just go out and take photographs of a place or people and submit 5 photos, this year the news/feature photography competition had an event we could cover, ‘Dance! A Master Class.’ So, both photographers and videographers for the broadcast group piled into a theatre room with large windows and mirrors as more than 50 high schoolers from surrounding schools came in to learn Step.

It was a very interesting process of dodging other cameras, avoiding having photographers in my photos, all while trying to capture little moments of these high school students learning to dance. It was fun, but very frustrating at the same time.

Well, the nerves paid off as Saturday morning the results of the competition were announced. I did place 1st and it was an amazing feeling.

Past, present Daily Beacon staff win awards at SEJC 2020

However, out of both experiences of SEJC, it was the whole conference that made an impact. There was a lot to learn from the guest speakers who I did get to listen too like photojournalists Eric Sheldon from Mississippi Today and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Jackson, both who encouraged us to approach stories as a storyteller, a great bonding moment for the group from UT who went and overall a good way to see growth.

Overall, it was a worthwhile experience to me because of the ability to reflect on what I had learned from my journalism classes and how I can prepare myself for what’s to come.