Tourists can take posed photos, flock to famous buildings and dine at restaurants that offer food they can’t pronounce.
All fine and well, but there’s no better way to dig deep into another culture than what we, as students, are doing right now.
I was thinking this as I saw my classmates whip out their weapons of choice — digital SLRs, camcorders, notepads — on the bus drive from the airport to our London hotel.
The tour guide announced some fact or another. “That’s a story idea,” someone said. Then the guide mentioned some other unrelated yet interesting information. “That’s another great story,” someone else said, shutters clicking and B-roll rolling.
The buildings themselves housed story ideas galore, and the city was so shimmering with promise it could have been mistaken for a flash of a camera.
I scribble these story ideas and names of places down in my notes. “We gotta make these new assignments,” I tell myself as a mental note. “We gotta hit the streets. We only have two full days in this city, and I have a lot to do as managing editor.”
Oh man. That title.
Let’s just put first things first: This trip is an Olympic-sized pool and I have the swimming capacity of a rock. I’ve had editor positions before, but I can safely say I have never handled a task so complicated and demanding as the one that awaited me in London and Paris.
But with the right velocity and support behind it, even rocks can soar.
We have been meeting weekly all the way up until this point, and I have gotten to know nearly every student by name, major and story assignment. I didn’t know it on the bus ride to the hotel, with lenses a-blazing and excitement rising, but some of my classmates would become my best teachers in just a few short days.
More later,
Suzanne Yada
Magazine Journalism
www.suzanneyada.com
Hello world!
7 years ago
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