My friends told me I was crazy for spending a third of my summer at a “journalism institute” instead of doing literally anything else. While they were working, hanging out or attending a Blackpink concert a mere 10 miles away, I was learning how to be a reporter.
While I miss my family and my refrigerator, I’m glad I became a cherub. In just the first week I talked to half-a-dozen strangers on the street, ran around campus all day for another story and burned my skin after sitting in the sun for hours to take photos at the Fourth of July parade.
During the past four weeks, I’ve filed over 3,400 words. That doesn’t count the pages of lecture notes color-coded in my spiral notebook or the pages upon pages of highlighted interview transcripts.
I’m not only leaving Evanston with new knowledge, but with new friends. We’ve bonded over late-night writing and boba runs, and I’ll be sad to leave them at the end of the program.
Now that it’s almost over, I know the “get ready for the best summer of your life” scrawled in sidewalk chalk on the first day wasn’t a lie.
