Balancing life as a student journalist difficult, but possible

Becoming a journalist may seem like a dead-end career choice, but with mass media evolving and growing at a rapid rate, it is becoming ever more important to pursue this field of study.

There are many books and websites out there to help the budding, college journalist, but very few sources show the firsthand experience in navigating college as a journalism major. As you begin your career studying the history of the field, it may be hard to transition between being a student, joining the campus newspaper, having a life, and balancing it all.

This blog will serve as a means of showing the type of experiences that are unique to this major by bringing in my personal experiences from writing at San Diego Mesa College, and hopefully San Diego State University come fall 2013.

You may ask “who am I, as a student, to advise other students in the field?”

Well, I am a recent veteran staff member for The Mesa Press, Mesa College’s student newspaper. I spent my first semester writing and photographing for the paper, spent my second semester as the Features Editor, and completed my experience on the paper by serving as editor-in-chief for my final two semesters. I balanced the stresses and unending work producing The Mesa Press with the rest of my class load as well as working 30-45 hours a week.

For four semesters I dealt with controversies, writers that couldn’t be bothered to work within deadlines, long hours in the newsroom, and several near-fatal-caffeine-overdoses, yet I lived to tell the tale. And that is what I intend to do – tell the tale (as part of my digital journalism class) and hopefully foster an ongoing conversation about student journalism. I will give advice on how to write certain types of articles, list tips on my minimal knowledge of photography, and hopefully learn something about blogging and digital media in return.

Feel free to either comment or send any questions you have to me at laurenmapp@gmail.com and I hope you enjoy this blog.

A self-portrait taken with my iPad in the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru. Photo Credit: Lauren J. Mapp

For a great book about student journalism, check out Rachele Kanigel's "The Student Newspaper Survival Guide."


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