Week #1

Hi everyone! For the next three weeks, I’m working on writing an article about how the pandemic and subsequent economic fallout is affecting teenager’s career and life goals. I know that the pandemic and social distancing have changed the way I think about my own future—for example, I measure my sense of success much differently and am a lot less preoccupied with metrics like test scores or even future career advances, marriage, or building a nuclear family than before March 2020. I’m interested in learning whether other people in my age group have had similar experiences if there are traceable trends, and what exactly was the catalyst, if any, for these changes. 

In order to answer these questions, I have the support of Suzanne Stevens, editor of the Portland Business Journal. I have weekly meetings with her to learn more about the journalistic process and what my next steps should look like to write my article. I met Suzanne because she has a daughter on my younger sister’s soccer team, and when I decided I wanted to look into journalism for my senior project, I knew she would have good advice to get me started. In our meeting this week, Suzanne told me how to use interviews to narrow down the subject matter of an article, how to ask flexible questions, and recommended websites to help with the transcription process. 

Image: Portland Business Journal logo, taken from Facebook. 

So far this week, I’ve been researching and scheduling interviews, which, unfortunately, involves my least favorite activity ever—sending emails. While I’ve had luck recruiting some students to interview, I’ve been a little less successful with finding expert opinions. I’ve reached out to professors of psychology at the University of Portland to see if anyone would be interested in talking to me about how teenagers respond to traumatic world events, but thus far, no one has responded. I’m hoping to hear back and complete those interviews by Wednesday of next week so that I can transcribe everything and be ready to begin my first draft.

My three goals for my project going forward are to 1) learn more about journalism as a career 2) practice journalistic writing and learn about the differences between analytic and creative writing 3) write an article that I enjoy!