The journalism class fosters growth in students’ writing abilities along with increasing their ability to efficiently communicate with other people. When signing up for the journalism class I did not know what to expect. However, I was excited because of the recommendations from friends saying they had an amazing experience with the class. I knew that I did not want a career in journalism, but I was told the class would help elevate my writing skills to another level for my future in medicine. After a full year of this course, it is safe to say that I learned so much about my strengths and weaknesses and how to improve my writing. By taking this course you can gain insight about yourself and which styles of writing fit you best. Are you more of an opinionated editorial writer or an informative feature writer?

Journalism is not just a basic English course with droning essays like some would expect it to be. This class teaches you how to stylistically write in ways that convey detailed information to an audience. There were no five paragraph essays, which was something I enjoyed. We could write from our heart rather than have to find evidence in a textbook to back up our argumentative opinions on the themes in Shakespeare. Along with writing, communication was another big learning concept. We set up interviews and discussions with our peers and administrators in order to increase our knowledge on the subject we were writing about. I gained so much confidence after interviewing many administrators and teachers. Also, it was interesting to learn about the history and different branches of journalism that I formerly did not know about. One of the greatest benefits of Journalism is to show students another career possibility as they begin to think about life after high school. Another is to help improve one’s investigation on a topic with the use of semiotics. When doing a report on a situation, you learn how to find every detail and use connotation to dig even deeper. This is what helps make your writing much more effective.

In the future, I will use my knowledge of journalism to better my communication, research skills, and writing style. As I go off to college the skill sets learned in this class will help me to succeed. I recommend that anybody who has the opportunity to enroll in this class do so. You will not regret it.