Turning Haight into Love (or at least, Less Hate)

Wow. It’s really over. We survived reporting. It kinda flew by, honestly, and it really wasn’t that hard. I mean, there were a couple of things I struggled with (obviously the whole talking to people part), but on the whole it really wasn’t all that bad.

The practical application of it all was actually really helpful, far better than newswriting. I think it would have been better to do more of this kind of thing – the crime story, scoping out a neighborhood, meeting story – all in newswriting so that we could get a better feel for it.

I feel like I learned a lot in this class. I didn’t exactly know how to just dive in and start discovering things about a neighborhood, or even how to find a story. Nothing seemed particularly newsworthy to me one week, and then everything did the next week.

At first, it was all ridiculously intimidating. I (almost) had breakdowns trying to talk to people on the street about what was going on in the neighborhood. It was absolutely terrifying. I hated it. After my first two stories, I was positive that I would have to find a way to get the hell out of journalism and get myself a new major.

Then we did the meeting stories, a ridiculously long haul for me, but hands down the easiest thing I’ve ever had to write. The redo wasn’t that bad, either. Once I got past the first interview in my profile, even that was easy. I somehow managed to hit my stride after the hardcore struggling to figure out what was going on in the Haight. The crime story was a piece of cake.

Now: the final story. Not my original idea, but it totally serves its purpose and fit the changes in the neighborhood that I’ve seen over the semester. All in all, not a bad story to write, even though the Whole Foods managers apparently aren’t allowed to give statements to anyone for any purpose whatsoever, or their names, for that matter. (Seriously: I went from press to project to paper to my teacher’s going to kill me if I don’t get something, and still absolutely nothing. Not one single manager would talk.)

Anyway, the Whole Foods story doesn’t apply everything I’ve learned over the semester, but I’m sure that’s not the point. I think it’s more to show off our skills, a shining example of how great we are now compared to how crappy we were in the beginning. I think I understand how to write a feature now far better than I did at this time last semester, and that’s probably the point.

I don’t want to change my major anymore, but I do plan on spending much more time writing about the things that interest me. Sorry, Haight, but that’s definitely not you, or HAIA, or the homeless, or Sit/Lie, or any of the issues that plague that little zone in the center of the city that I’ve haunted all semester. I think y’all know what I want to write about by now. Look forward to it in the future.

That’s the best thing I’ve gained from this class, I think: An absolute assurance of my interests, and the knowledge that I can write about anything under the sun, should I need to.

So here’s to our semester, growing up and all that jazz. I think we’ve earned the summer.