I’m an upperclassman now… Wow, that feels weird to say.
Two years ago, I was a freshman still roaming aimlessly around COM Ave. – unsure of the difference between convenience and dining points. (For the record, dining points can be used at any dining hall, other on-campus dining locations, and Domino’s while convenience points basically BU bucks – they can be used for snacks, laundry, Subway, Cane’s and more.)
Anyway, I feel that I’ve grown a lot since freshman year, and I thank COM for that. I came in as a journalism major because I knew I had a passion for writing and figured, “why not?” I combined my love for writing with my love of sports and planned on being a sports journalist. Since I also loved performance (and was in many a play in high school), I figured sports broadcast would be an ever better route to take.
That being said, I had very little formal experience in journalism – my school didn’t have any journalism classes and my school’s newspaper was in disarray – so I was nervous heading into COM. I shouldn’t have been.
The experience I’ve gotten inside the classroom and out at BU has been incredible and it’s taught me so much about journalism and broadcasting. I’ve been part of the Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper, since freshman year, which has been an invaluable journalistic experience. I’ve covered a bunch of different BU teams on beats and am now the sports editor there. My involvement with BUTV10’s only pro sports talk show, Offsides, has taught me the fundamentals of studio production.
I’m most excited about my current classes, though. I have the honor of taking TV reporting (JO 351) with Boston legend and former anchor RD Sahl, and am also taking Sports Broadcast (JO 524) with Frank Shorr, who has won EIGHT!! Emmy Awards while the executive producer at WHDH in Boston.
These classes have broadened my horizons in ways I didn’t think possible. Each week I get to learn the skills necessary to thrive in a TV-news environment with RD while making my own professional packages on stories that interest me. In Shorr’s class, we produce “Sportsnite” each Tuesday. The show, filmed in BUTV10’s Studio West, allows me to take on a new role each week – whether it’s live reporting, anchoring, running the soundboard, controlling the switcher, or operating a camera.
So my advice to you is stick it out through those big lectures and intro classes, because as you go further and further into your COM studies, classes will become more and more interesting and will give you the professional experience needed to succeed in the job market.
COM on,
Nick
