My friends told me I was crazy for spending a third of my summer at a \u201cjournalism institute\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
While I miss my family and my refrigerator, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
During the past four weeks, I\u2019ve filed over 3,400 words. That doesn\u2019t count the pages of lecture notes color-coded in my spiral notebook or the pages upon pages of highlighted interview transcripts.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not only leaving Evanston with new knowledge, but with new friends. We\u2019ve bonded over late-night writing and boba runs, and I\u2019ll be sad to leave them at the end of the program.<\/p>\n
Now that it\u2019s almost over, I know the \u201cget ready for the best summer of your life\u201d scrawled in sidewalk chalk on the first day wasn\u2019t a lie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Instead of spending July at home with my family and friends, I decided to go to Evanston and immerse myself in journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":7684,"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":[460],"class_list":["post-7682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":460,"user_id":237,"is_guest":0,"slug":"evelynkraber","display_name":"Evelyn Kraber","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7744eba3cb88ce9f90ccb9c9af6b6c4a8686b85c29426eaf01a0ef40d55e48d6?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Kraber","first_name":"Evelyn","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7682"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9640,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7682\/revisions\/9640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7682"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}