On the first day of spring semester my freshman year, Elon Professor Janna Anderson walked into our media writing class with a baseball bat and a whistle. “I’m more than just your professor this semester,” she told us, “I’m your coach.”
Let’s just say by the end of the semester I could have run a journalism marathon. Throughout the spring Professor Anderson kept us on our toes with current events. She drilled the guidelines for the Associated Press into our heads. We were assigned to cover an event or speaker at least once a week, turning our pieces in on tight midnight deadlines. Other times we had “fly-out-the-door” assignments, which means exactly what it sounds like: we would walk into the classroom, get an assignment and have an hour and 10 minutes to fly out the door, get the story and report it back.
When I got an internship with my local paper, The Dayton Daily News, the summer after my freshman year I was ecstatic. Working as a reporter, my editor had me writing actual pieces for publication on day two. I started with doing briefs and writing up articles from press releases. I was getting a byline in the paper nearly every day — and I loved it! Sitting in the newsroom doing interviews, writing and editing from my comfortable desk chair made for a smooth first three weeks of my internship.
And then I got my first on-site assignment. It was the fifth of July and noise from all the Independence Day celebrations had caused more than 80 dogs to run away from their homes, flooding the local Animal Shelter. My editor got word of the story and told me I had just over an hour to get downtown, get the story and get it posted online.
I couldn’t believe it. I had just been given a fly-out-the-door assignment. But this wasn’t a class paper for a grade; it was an informative, timely article for the newspaper. I wasn’t a student; I was a reporter.
I was so thankful that day for all the real world experience Professor Anderson had given me in class. Other than fighting city traffic, I had no problem getting the story. I tag-team interviewed the owner of the shelter with a local TV reporter, had a phone interview with a single mom whose dog was missing (I had to figure out how to calm her down when she started crying), published the story before 5 o’clock and recorded a brief for the radio.
I had a few more fly-out-the-doors before the summer ended, including a traffic jam caused by a man who almost jumped off a bridge — but nothing quite compared to the first time I realized Professor Anderson had been coaching us for the real world all along.
PS. If you’re interested in seeing how it turned out, go here to see my article about lost dogs I wrote for the Dayton Daily News.
-Katy Steele ’14
Katy is a University Guide at Elon and originally from Centerville, Ohio. Right now, she is a Journalism major with a minor in Spanish. Her favorite thing about Elon? The amazing people she’s met who are helping her to grow into the person she’s meant to be!