This project reinforced my passions and aspirations of becoming a journalist. For me, “Next Generation Radio” makes me feel that I’m being trained to be apart of the next generation of storytellers.
I am so thankful that I was paired with my mentor, Trenae Nuri, who cares just as much about this project as I do. She gives me motivation, advice, critiques, and laughter. Before meeting each other it seemed like we were already on the same page. Although the brainstorming process was a challenge, I realized there were endless stories that I could do for the project. It wasn’t until Trenae helped me find a story that included all of my interests, the arts, food, the Asian community, and volunteer work. We found the perfect story that incorporated all of them.
Trenae and I kept in constant contact throughout the entire process. I couldn’t have done this without her. I not only see her as my mentor, but also my friend.
Reporting, writing, editing, collecting audio and taking photos was very hectic and rewarding. I’m surprised we did this within five days. Meeting deadlines was my main goal. It was extremely satisfying watching the squares on the whiteboard get crossed off.
After we locked down our interview time on Tuesday morning, interview questions were constantly flowing through my mind.
On Tuesday morning, we took the bus to South Philadelphia to the site of the new urban Garden of Eden. While we waited for Meei-Ling Ng to arrive, we learned that the famous singer Marian Anderson attended the church. This was a cool Philly fact.
We did stumble upon a lot of obstacles. For example, our first take of ambient noise recording had many voice and microphone interferences. To solve that problem, we went out on Thursday to Ng’s garden project at the Sunday Breakfast Mission to grab more garden sounds and another interview.
Another obstacle happened while I was editing my audio piece. My laptop malfunctioned and deleted all of my edits. Trenae helped me and we were able to make the deadline.
I’ve meet amazing people throughout this program and brushed up my skills as a journalist. I couldn’t be more grateful for this opportunity.