Final Blog

 

This project was really born out of quarantine boredom. After having watched too many hours of TV, I needed something to occupy my brain. I created my YouTube channel and never looked back. This project was my way of continuing my channel and learning journalism techniques that I could apply. I think the communication we had with our mentor went really well and we were able to apply feedback in an effective manner. We met with him every morning at 10 AM to discuss what we were hoping to accomplish that day and also go over what we did the previous day. It allowed us to grow with our work very fluidly and actively make edits. The amount of content we thought we were going to produce ended up being a little ambitious as we didn’t really account for the amount of editing we were going to need. I still think we produce a tremendous amount of content for the time we had, and we focused on quality more than quantity. I learned that the NFL is an extremely fast-paced workplace that requires confidence and self-awareness. From everyone that we were able to talk to with industry experience, they explained that working in the NFL is largely time consuming because of how often it can change. My advice to any students planning their projects in the future is to make sure that your project is something you love. Obviously, your motivation to work in the last three weeks of your senior year will be low, but if you’re doing something that you truly enjoy, the time will go by fast. My most important takeaway overall is that working hard on the smallest details is what matters. When you’re creating as much content as we have been over these past few weeks, there’s always small details that could be fixed. Your attention and dedication to those details is what will make your work stand out amongst a vast crowd of similar work. Someone will notice that you worked just a little harder than the person next to you and it can make all the difference. My mentor, Myles Simmons, was an ideal person to have helping me improve my work. He gave me thoughtful and honest feedback throughout the project that allowed me to continuing growing. He gave us contacts to reach out to that could answer some questions that maybe weren’t in his direct field. He was an amazing person to explore sports journalism with and I truly valued his expertise.