When getting into the journalism business I never knew how much I would have to encounter learning. I entered Gaylord College in June of this past summer and I never knew how much I would learn in a very short period of time. Through the course of several months of hard work and determination, I have made my way almost to the top. Things are completely different now than they use to be last fall.

Starting out at a newscast ran by students, it is a little intimidating because I came in being older but I was not as far along in the program as others. In some situations, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I started out on camera, running the camera and making sure the anchors looked the best. This was difficult at first because of the time restraints within the newscast.

When looking at the rundown, I got crosseyed very quickly. I had no idea what any of these words meant and I felt very overwhelmed. For those of you reading this, a rundown is basically a schedule of the newscast and how the order of the newscast is set up. It will have numbers on it associated with the story. The story is what is going on. Then there is the camera the anchors are reading to, and what type of shot to get. Heres where things get tricky.

An OTS is an Over The Shoulder shot. Where the graphic sits basically on the left shoulder to describe what the story is about.

SOT; sound on tape: most people refer to this as a soundbite that is very important to the story.

Package: a series of VO's and sot's that allow a reporter to portray the story for the viewer, generally to break up anchor time and give them a moment to breathe.

Working in the newsroom is hard. I will not lie, its very complicated and a lot of people cannot handle the amount of stress that comes through in a newsroom. It takes a team to fully put together a newscast and make sure it looks good on air. Without that team, it couldn't happen every day. I wouldn't trade it for the world though.