Six months of the daily reporting grind

A friend of mine commented on whether or not I'd have another blog relaunch, and the short answer is: no. Because I'll be relaunching this thing virtually every time I post anything...

But the past six months have been a whirlwind of work and profound change in my life. Working at a daily newspaper has been one of the most exciting, stressful, dynamic, debilitating, daunting, thrilling, enlightening experience of my young career as a reporter. I wrote more than 215 stories, about 65,000 words, and know a heck of a lot more about the world than I did before I started. The experiences I have had to witness and report have been eye-opening experiences. And the amount of talent and experience in the newsroom I worked in really blew my mind.

And now I am again on to new things with my six-month contract over, and I have to say, I will miss the people I had the chance to work with on a daily basis. The teamwork required to put together a daily newspaper is amazing. Some days are better than others (and when everyone is having a bad day, it shows), but in a newsroom, no person is an island, and I realized that more so after returning to my freelance reporting career as I look for another newsroom job. The coordination, communication and teamwork required was far more than I expected, and without a doubt I can say that I learned a heck of a lot, not just about journalism but about myself as well.

I have always been someone who tries to reflect on my day and evaluate what I did well and what needed improvement. For most people, this kind of self-examination happens occasionally, say after a major incident in their life, but I did it almost on a daily basis, and I have to admit it did become overwhelming to deal with at times knowing how much improvement I needed to accomplish to do a better job as a reporter. There were times I questioned whether I was cut out for the job or not.

But in the end, I have to admit constantly trying to improve on a daily basis did help me learn from my mistakes and become incrementally better as time passed and as I gained experience. I'm happy to say that by the end of it, I could say with absolute certainty that the entire experience was one of the best experiences so far in my short and young career, and I honestly couldn't have asked for more.

In hindsight, I probably could have done better or done more here and there, but I don't regret anything, which is pretty amazing coming from someone who has a tendency to dwell on my mistakes. But that too came from my experience in the newsroom: rather than dwell on a mistake, fix it as soon as possible and move on.

My six months are over, and I'm moving on with a wealth of experience and treasured memories for many years to come.