Week 6 Reflection– Personal Contribution

This week I began the process of interviewing ILA members. The content from these interviews will be used as marketing material. I will write articles for the ILA newsletter about each member that I interview and I will edit the recording of the interview into short clips that can be uploaded to the ILA YouTube channel. This week I started the process by writing and revising interview questions and contacting the members that I will be interviewing. I also met with my supervisor and another staff member at ILA to practice the interview and revise the questions that I wrote. 

I am excited about this particular project because it perfectly combines my two majors, Leadership and Journalism. I am able to use the skills that I learn as a journalism major such as interviewing skills and writing skills. I think that my journalism major has made me an expert at taking notes from an interview and turning them into a well written story. I plan to use these skills to create engaging marketing material for the ILA. 

This project also allows me to use my leadership major. I think that my Jepson education has given me insights that are especially helpful as an intern at ILA, and for this specific project. For example, in critical thinking we learned about how to map out arguments to see if they were good arguments. Although I don’t make argument maps, that skill will allow me to analyze my interviewees’ arguments and statements to see if they make sense or not and decide whether or not to include them in my article. Also, in Theories and Models we learned about how leaders are often more effective when their followers find identity in the leader. In the context of an interview, I am a leader because I am leading the interview. My insights about leadership have taught me that in order to effectively conduct an interview, I need to spark some kind of connection with the person I am interviewing to make sure that they find some sort of identity with me. 

In this way, my insights about Leadership have prepared me for this project at ILA.