Blog Assignment #7 Final Reflection

From this course I really learned how to find the creative side out of any journalistic topic. I also learned how to show more instead of telling. I feel like I can really apply what I learned in this class into any future articles I work on. My favorite piece is the first assignment we worked on. The following is my favorite passage because it was the first time in the class where i felt I wrote freely and with ease.

Headphones on:

It's too late to go back so, I walk down 136th St. and walk by  a group of vegetable and fruit stands. Five short Hispanic women in their 50's, reminiscent of my own mother,  are already flocked around the avocados as if by habit. Some are squeezing the vegetable(fruit?) others are shaking the avocados by their ears as if expecting the avocados to talk. I swerve around a couple of people and finally get to the1 train station and I hear the train roar into the station. I sprint downstairs in a hurry like a rat carrying a pizza slice. I go to the MetroCard machine to buy a MetroCard. I feel the train rushing me but my lifetime of MTA experience helps keep me composed.

Start

English

Metrocard

Refill your card

$10.00

ATM Card

Enter Pin

No receipt

I casually walk to the turnstile as if not to scare the train away. I swipe my card

Please swipe again.

Swipe.

Please swipe again.

Swipe!!!

Third times a charm and I walk into a cart, squeezing past two people blocking the door so I can get to the other side and lean on the closed doors.

I hope to continue to revise the piece and maybe even expand it into a full story.

Blog Assignment #5 Planning an Interview for a personal profile

I wanted to interview a creative person such as an artist or writer. At first I was thinking about interviewing a professor of mine because he seemed to have had an interesting life. He was a former screenwriter and journalist and published author. However I decided to interview this author, who I won't name, that was coming to LaGuardia as part of an event. She was a Nieman fellow for harvard University and a former writer in the New York Times. I decided to interview her after her presentation as  part of the Bridge but also for this assignment. Here are a few questions I wanted to ask:

Who would you say are some of the writers who inspired you to write?

What was your writing process like?

Was choosing a title difficult?

What are you working on now?

How did this story impact you?

What did you learn about identity through writing this book?

What was it like growing up around violence?

What was the hardest part of writing this book?

Eventually I ended up choosing this author because I wanted an assignment that would take me out of my comfort zone. I thought this would be good practice as i pursue a career in Journalism. Also from reading her book I could tell the author was an interesting person.