Day-in-the-life Story

For my day-in-the-life story, I decided to follow Ryan Joy, the director of Legislative Affairs, to detail his involvement in the Student Senate as well as several other academic and social outlets at the University of Northern Colorado.

The most difficult part of this assignment was maintaining a flexible schedule throughout the assignment. My original assignment for this story was to cover a student rally being organized by Joy on behalf of the Associated Students of Colorado, a student-run association that is seeking to advocate for increases in higher education funding for universities throughout Colorado. However, this assignment changed just before the deadline, as Joy was unable to organize the rally at UNC. So, at the last minute, I decided to write a day-in-the-life story that focused on him and his efforts to further this cause at UNC.

The easiest part of the assignment was getting together with Joy, who provided me with a majority of the background information that I needed for the assignment. Since this story mainly focused on Joy as a person – both in Student Senate and as a normal college student – a bulk of the information for my story derived from face-to-face interviews that I conducted with him, although much of the additional information about ASC’s rally was garnered from information that I gathered at prior Student Senate meetings.

The most enjoyable part of this assignment was following Joy through his daily routine and taking meticulous notes detailing his actions and surroundings. This experience allowed me to notice the small details that have the ability to transport the reader into the context of the story and them a more personal reading experience.

About this blog

The purpose of this blog is to discuss the various issues that are being addressed by the Student Senate at the University of Northern Colorado and inform the student body of the decisions that are made, which will ultimately affect them and their college experience.

I have three years of journalism experience working as a staff writer for The Mirror, where I covered various events and beats, including the Student Senate. In addition, I was selected for an internship with the Asian American Journalists’ Association and worked as an intern at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for nearly four months, where I covered topics and events that required a significant amount of investigative reporting.

I believe that there is always room for self-improvement, because the field of journalism is constantly changing though the development of new methods to disseminate information more quickly and efficiently. As I have learned in my Advanced News and Feature Writing class, blogs have developed into an essential news source because reporters are able to readily send out information while the story is happening; however, I think that this new mode of new reporting will prove to be challenging for me because I have never used blogs to post stories prior to this class.