:: we’ve only learnt so little ::
9:44 PM
As I move further into my internship, it’s only the right thing to expect to have learned many things. Each passing week continues to hold new areas for my eyes to open up to and for my mind to grasp on. Spending 3 months in a different environment and doing different things from your usual student routine is bound to be a process that gives you many takeaways, and despite only being a couple weeks in I’ve already encountered many realizations that I would not have seen if I had not opted to spend my free time as an intern.
As an intern under the Editorial Services team in Astro Awani, I’m learning about a different angle of a news station; one that I have never focused much on because I suppose I looked at the concept of one in a very 2-dimensional manner. Being an aspiring journalist, I guess you could say that I viewed the fundamental core a news station from only a few aspects; that being news writing, news editing and reporting. When I got offered my internship position here in Awani under this team, I was unaware of what the term ‘Editorial Services’ really meant. To be very frank, I had no idea what I was gearing myself up for at all, and I actually preferred it that way because I wanted to dive into my internship with a clean slate - ready to absorb everything that was new.
Only once I had started was I given a brief explanation of what they did in this department that I was going to be a part of. It was definitely something a little different for me me, something I never really placed into the blueprints that I had laid out for myself. I was now dabbling into marketing, business strategies, sales, and even producing. These were areas that I would glance right past if I were looking at a list of internship opportunities because my mind would be so fixated on looking for “writing” somewhere in the job description – and I would say that it’s a common mistake for many of us students to limit ourselves to a certain path based on the things that we have studied.
Many of us are brought up in a very competitive nature that teaches us that narrowing our focus would mean excelling. Narrowing our focus allows us more time and effort into aiming to be one of the best in that certain area - and being the best is what we’ve been taught to want, regardless of how we achieve that goal. Yes, this trains us to becoming increasingly skilled in one thing, but it also curbs our openness to look at things from a bigger picture. Identifying your interests are definitely important and necessary, but we have to be open to the fact that there is no one way approach to the things that you’re interested in.
I’ve come to look at my ideals a little more realistically. My areas of interest used to revolve around writing and current affairs around the world, hence pushing journalism to the forefront of what I wanted to do. In an ideal world, I would think that writing about a good cause or about real problems would be enough to get people to care. Why would anybody say no to content that matters?
Well, people do say no.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to how you need to get what you want to say out there. There’s much more to it then just finding a story, reporting about it and putting it up on the channel expecting it to be consumed by millions just because it’s a good story. By looking at things more realistically, I understand that everything has a business model to it and how importance it is to look at things with that model in mind. I’ve come to learn about the various ways that content can be consumed and how the ‘what matters’ could be integrated with the ‘what people want’. Your ideas are useless if you don’t sell it the right way.
Out of curiosity, I had asked a colleague about the hows and whys of her choosing to work here. Our little chat further amplified how the real world doesn’t work the way we think it is when we’re a student. The path to a gateway is not clear cut. In fact, it might take us through many unforeseen little trails that end up taking us to our end destination in a more efficient way. Regardless of what you’re doing or how busy you think you are with your studies, always try to look out for opportunities - opportunities to take part in something that believe in, opportunities to start something that you’re passionate about, opportunities to learn things you can’t learn on your own through reading texts on a page or on a screen. And when an opportunity comes knocking - don’t make an excuse to not get the door.
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