A little over a year ago, I was faced with the difficult task of enrolling in my first set of classes at Widener University. Since I was still living in Georgia and going to Kennesaw State University, the process was even more complex.
My mom and I decided that we would travel up north in November to get things straightened out with this new school and visit family while we were there.
I met with my advisor a few days after we had arrived in order to figure what classes, that I had taken at Kennesaw, matched up with the classes that were offered at Widener. Thankfully almost all of my previous classes had transferred, but it was still an overwhelming process. I was then faced with the grueling task that every college student dreads – choosing classes.
Even with my advisor, I felt completely lost. So many new courses that I had to choose from, but since I was a transfer student, the only classes left were those that no one else wanted to take. I thought long and hard, especially about the humanities class that I now needed. I weighed my options over and over in my mind. The only two choices were American history literature, magazine journalism or I could begin taking another language. I did enjoy Spanish in high school, but college level somehow did not seem like a good idea. I then immediately omitted American history literature because the lack of interest I have toward it, so I was automatically left with magazine journalism.
I was skeptical about the decisions I had made for my first semester at my new school, but when I left my advisors office, I never thought about it again.
In the beginning of the summer, I logged into Widener’s online portal to figure out how to work the program before I was submerged into a full semester and buried under multiple assignments. I noticed I had received a few emails. While I was scrolling through them, I stumbled across one that read: [ENGL-388-B]Books for Magazine Journalism class. With a title like that, it was important to read. I continued to skim the email and gathered that there would be three books that would need to be purchased for the course.
Then, I stopped. The last full sentence before the teacher signed his name said that we would need to read the New York Times before class, every Monday.
Those are the worst words you could hear when you are someone who doesn’t really like to read. I instantly made up my mind that I was not going to like this class.
The first day of school rolled around and my second class was magazine journalism. I aimlessly walked around trying to find the room, eyed the first seat that I saw, and sat down. The room was damp, dark and cold which I began to think was a foreshadow of how the semester was going to go.
We started class a few minutes after my professor stepped foot in the door, beginning with the usual introductions and syllabus overview. An outline of the course showed numerous stories that would need to be written throughout the semester, but nothing seemed too difficult.
I realized that this was going to be a challenging class when my teacher began handing out the first assignment. We were told that we had to choose a topic (within the city of Chester), report and then write a full story about it. I enjoy talking to anyone, but I thought to myself, I am certainly no reporter.
A few days later, it was time to begin writing my first article, so I mustered up the courage and called the person in charge of the Riverfront Ramble (a festival with music, vendors, etcetera in Chester). She was very willing to talk to me and I found it to be pretty fun.
As the semester continued, I talked to numerous people that I never would have talked to if it weren’t for this magazine journalism class. My introductions went from “Hey, I’m Blair” to “Hello, my name is Blair Gelb and I am a reporter for the Chester magazine.” By the end of that course, I had interviewed nine different people for one story without any problems, been published in the Chester magazine and ultimately realized that I had fallen in love with journalism.
So, the moral of this story is don’t be too quick to judge something because you may truly enjoy it. Thank you to all of the Widener students who decided not to choose magazine journalism as a class because otherwise I wouldn’t have ever thought that this is something I could possibly do with my life. Everything does happen for a reason.
https://issuu.com/chestermagazine/docs/chestermagazine_su2016_final_single
