Portland: Too cool for school?
Posted: July 13th, 2010 | Author: Sarah | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: NWISC, Portland, tech | 1 Comment »
Our program assistant Ashly recently asked us students to write out our goals for and the skills we offered to NWISC.
This next sentence is going to make my colleagues want to slap me, or at least stop reading—but give me a chance. Here goes: Caught up in two weeks of classes, assignments and others’ technical difficulties, I started to wonder why I came.
I’m Sara. That’s right, Sara. Not Sarah, as my username might lead you to believe. Blame the wife of Abraham for popularizing the latter (less cool) spelling, or something. I’ve been in journalism for four years. I’ve had plenty of arguments over ethics—dealing with student deaths, bomb threats, headlines that say “fuck!” and columns advocating student-professor relationships. I’ve conducted more interviews than I’d like. I’m quite familiar with every aspect of print. I host a radio show. I work in a multimedia lab (shown below) where using two screens to edit with Audacity or Final Cut Pro is the norm. I’ve been using WordPress for a year. At school, I’m often late to class when I get too involved in troubleshooting computer problems for other students.
When I first heard of NWISC over a year and a half ago, I knew it was an ideal opportunity. But in these two weeks, I started to forget why. I began to think, maybe I didn’t have as much to learn as I thought I did?
Boy, was I wrong.
While working on my resume this weekend, I recalled that which I was forgetting—a crucial aspect of this program. First, I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about the tech world. I was kindly reminded of that by my cocky former manager from the aforementioned tech lab, when I sought out his resume an example for my own. (It was awesome.)
But second, and more importantly, just because I have journo skills and tech skills, it doesn’t mean I have anything to do with them. I see a lot of passion in my fellow students, which clearly translates into their words and behaviors. But for me, knowing the keyboard shortcuts in Audacity doesn’t compel me to do anything positive for the world around me. I’d like to, but I just don’t.
And that’s why I’m here this summer: To learn from my peers, who have taken action without necessarily having the “skills” to do so, to start looking for ways to put my own “skills” to good use, and to strike a resonant balance between the two.
— Sara