Soaring to Success

"There is no flying without wings." — French Proverb

I think the biggest trick to success is support. Whether the support is from a boyfriend or girlfriend, best friend or family member, having someone there cheering you on and appreciating your work motivates you to strive for more. I believe that support is huge in journalism. It's all about your connections and who you know. You could be doing amazing work, but if the right people aren't seeing it, you'll never get anywhere.

I've had some exciting journalistic moments in the past few days that have inspired me to keep striving for more and reminded me how passionate I am about everything I'm doing now and want to do in the future. 

On Saturday night, I had the privilege to fly out of Columbia to Sikeston, Missouri in a small, four-passanger plane. My boyfriend, James, is at the end of his training to become a pilot, and he has a few hours of flying left before he can take his Pilot's test. So Saturday night, I got to sit in the back of the airplane behind James and his flight instructor amazed at the view and all the hard work he has put into getting to where he was sitting behind the control panel. Like I said earlier in the my "Beautiful World" post, just the feeling of getting into an airplane and flying to a completely new place to experience different things is what inspires me and makes me so passionate about journalism. We landed in Sikeston, ate a delicious dinner at Lambert's Cafe, tried new foods and saw how they live, then flew back to Columbia. I brought a camera on the flight and experimented with taking pictures as the sun was setting over the Missouri River. 

Another exciting journalistic moment I had was my shift Monday night at KOMU. I was talking on the phone with my mom earlier, and she was saying how Mizzou was the perfect choice for me, since it has so many opportunities to get involved before you even start your journalism sequence classes. Last semester, I just cut national video and ran the teleprompter at the station every Thursday night. I just wanted to get familiar with the video editing software and the atmosphere of the newsroom. This semester, I have a Monday night shift as Live VO Patrol. For the past 3 weeks, I've gone to the station for my shift and sat around since all the reporters had already gone out to shoot footage, and there was no breaking news. So FINALLY, Monday night I was able to go out with a senior broadcast student at Mizzou and help her with her live shot for the 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. news. She was so helpful and explained everything she was doing so I could learn, and let me shoot video and help out. She taught me how to feed the footage back to the station from the Live Reporting Backpack (so cool!) and help get the camera, lights and mic set up for the live shot. She went live from the Columbia Public School Administration building at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. It was so awesome to just be able to learn from someone that was once in my position and see how portable and independent broadcast journalism can be. Even though I wasn't doing anything huge, watching her reassured me that this is what I want to do, and made me so excited to start making packages and reporting the news!