Target\u2019s fluorescent lights beamed down on me as I stood awkwardly between aisles, scanning for my first random target. I settled on a young woman browsing the throw pillow section. Fumbling over my words and certain I was visibly sweating, I questioned her about Evanston restaurants\u2019 no-cash policies.<\/p>\n
After 72 seconds \u2014 which felt like 72 years \u2014 I fled Target like a soldier leaving a battle zone. Devoid of her age, occupation, hometown and anything remotely resembling a usable quote, my interview was a certifiable failure.<\/p>\n
Although I felt like crawling into my twin-XL and never seeing daylight again, there was something at play more that was important than my feelings: a deadline.<\/p>\n
What followed was a series of conversations with complete strangers. Eating a sandwich, examining fruit, walking down the street: no matter what they were doing, they weren\u2019t safe from hearing \u201cHi, I\u2019m a summer journalism student…\u201d<\/p>\n
I would be lying if I said my nerves disappeared as I jumped from assignment to assignment. But, my introduction improved. I collected the required information and I took rejection in stride.<\/p>\n
I talked to people who reminded me why I love journalism. People invited me to sit with them, told me about the things they love and shared their time and expertise. I\u2019ll walk away from Cherubs much differently than I walked into my first interview: now, I\u2019m confident there are people who have a story to tell me. And I\u2019ll be ready to ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite a tough first interview, I kept working on my assignments and gained confidence in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[133],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":133,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-ceckstein","display_name":"Celeste Eckstein","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}