SOC's Media In the Mix Podcast Clips

Welcome to Media Mix, the only podcast produced and hosted by the School of Communication at American University. Join us as we create a safe space to explore topics and communication at the intersection of social justice, tech, innovation, and pop culture.

Building off of the people around you, that's exactly it. Not everyone is going to have the capacity or the ability to function as a mentor for you throughout your career or even while you're still in school. But there will be people who have the time and who wants to act as that for you. And so figure out who those people are that you are really going to gain the most knowledge from and get the most out of. It can be difficult to identify those people sometimes and it is legwork, I will tell you that it is genuine work to do that. But once you find them, you will find that they will be with you along the whole way.

That has been the case actually, for the person who hired me at my very first internship, my second semester at AU, we are still in touch to this day. We're friends on Facebook. I've bounced ideas off of him throughout my career. And so those people can be found. But it's also up to you once you identify those people and once you begin to build those relationships to continue to maintain them. And that doesn't mean that you need to be in touch with these people constantly. That's not what I'm saying. But reach out to them every six months or so let them know how you're doing, ask about how they're doing. You never know where someone else's career might take them, where it might be of help or use to you either from an advice standpoint, or from getting a job. And it's important to keep those connections warm.

And for those introverts out there, you don't need to reach out to everyone. Be judicious about who you are selecting to reach out to. Be judicious about the groups that you're joining and make sure they're the ones that you really feel match that path that you want to follow. It's not about having to have your fingers in everything, and I know how scary and how ultimately time consuming that can be. And you can actually lose your way by doing that. So you really want to be careful and craft that communication on that path for yourself and develop and define those relationships that will be most beneficial to you.

Yeah, you know, I really like the where where AU is positioned, you know, geographically, not just academically, I think that if you're, if you're interested in nonfiction storytelling, a big pull to American University is the fact that you're in DC, you're aware of the biggest decisions in the world, arguably, are made. And there's, I forget how many 1,000s of NGOs and organizations [that are] all striving to gain attention for their initiatives or their projects. And that's an opportunity for really anyone in this field to sort of insert themselves and offer their skill set to help an organization meet, you know, meet their audience meet, you know, meet new people, meet new audiences and communicate what they're doing. And so you're not going to find that, you know, in the, in the, in the middle of the woods in North Carolina, probably.

I mean, I think for me, as an artist, one of the big picture, things I learned was to like, not be afraid of doing something ridiculous, you know, and had the pandemic not happened, we wouldn't have done this, you know, but having that breadth and just being unafraid to jump into something that seems wildly out of what you've done in the past was was a big lesson for me. Yeah, for me, at least, the city is the starting place, always, you know, some of the first locations in the first project we did, were just places that during the pandemic, I had taken my husband, my kid to get out of the house and see where we could go safely and you know, so some of the spots started like that. And then once that happens, you start to go down all these routes, and you see the sights and you see the opportunities everywhere for what the kind of hidden stories are, and it goes back and forth, you know, so you find something in the real world and you start to research it online, and there's some spark or some kernel of information there, that sends you off to some other explanation of the real world. And it kind of goes back and forth.

So there's always you know, this fun, like, well, I don't know how to do that. But that's a good idea. Let's figure out how someone else did it. Or where can we source the object and do something to that object? If it's not too time consuming, because Jenny's usually heading up the packing up of hundreds of boxes. Yeah, we have a whole crew but yeah, it's a, that's one two whole angle that had never been a part of my work before.

But now we're manufacturing, half in school and in life is not going to be linear. That was something that I struggled with at the very beginning, I mentioned I had a plan coming in. And as that plan started to change, I did freak out a little bit and begin to question myself and wonder if I was making the right decision or not. And that can be really hard. Especially if you're a type A person, if you have all of your lists ready to go, and you're the one who's finishing things early. And that can be really, really challenging. But you know, the best advice I can give is to take a step back and really evaluate what it is that you want, you know, and again, be flexible, know that that could change. But what do you want right now? And what are your goals right now? And then if that requires a shift, change, do it and see if it works or not, don't be afraid to test and learn in your own career in your own life. That has been the hardest thing for me. But the most valuable thing for me to do throughout my career, and it allowed me to, like I said, have those three different paths, and each one has had its own place in my career growth. And I don't feel like I missed out on anything or made any wrong moves really along the way because it was all a learning experience. Right?

So after AU, I had this info session and the job fair on campus, and ended up at Discovery. They had me with this Discovery News team. I was there for a long time. I worked with a different team for a while but came back to Discovery News. And we launched a YouTube channel, which is now called, "Seeker," it's owned by Vox, it's very big. And it's more or less dormant at this point. They don't have a staff supporting it. But we made like 3,500 videos over the course of the run of that channel. And then at some point, it was sold to another company and sold to another company and then Vox bought it. And in that time, I was like, "Okay, I've really I know how this works, I should be able to do this myself. And then I'm not beholden to all of these different changes." Because this industry, this, this digital media industry is very dynamic, is a nice way to put it. But it's also very chaotic, very polite way to put. Thank you. Yeah. And so all of these things were changing. And I was just like I'm out of here, I would like to have some stability. And it's sad when the stability is to work for yourself and have no understanding of if you're going to make money at all, or what you're going to do.

And so I went independent, and I took a month off, because I was totally burned out. And I watched all the Marvel movies and television shows in order. And after that month was over, I was like, Okay, let's sit down and figure this out. And so I made a video every week, for about three months, just about whatever, just to kind of get back into the groove of making things. And the thing that surprised me was how much I liked editing, discover working at Discovery in general was, was great on a variety different ways. It was also terrible, a variety different ways, just like working anywhere, you know, to be totally frank, part of it is it's a big company, you're one of many, many 1000s of people working on, you know, parallel missions, which is both interesting, it gives you a lot of room to specialize.

But you're also subject to the whims of whatever that company decides to do the next day, you know, and that can be tough, you know, and then and then a lot, a lot of universities are full of staff that went on, got their degree, got their advanced degree, and then just immediately started teaching. And from a purely academic standpoint, I'm sure that's fine. But when you're talking about an industry that requires actual, you know, skills and experience, networking is huge, you know, everybody that I learned from, for the most part, have either worked in the field for extensive amount of time or was still working in the field. And, and that's just so important for being able to connect what you're learning to that next step into, into the workforce, or, you know, creating your own job, whatever that might be. And I think you just, you know, like what Greg just said, it's like, these folks are working in NatGeo, NASA, etc. I know a lot of folks that are independent producers now, you know, creating content for HBO, or you name it and so I think you can probably gain practical skills like that elsewhere but I think that the connections that the the staff have to industry is really key to helping folks take that next step. That's

What I tell students when I go to like classrooms and stuff is all work is group work. Yeah. And then the other thing is because all work is group work, to just be nice, you know, I have this thing. Can we swear on your podcast? Okay, my mom, I have this sticky note on my desktop that says, Be friendly and enthusiastic. Be humble. Don't be an asshole. No one wants to work with an asshole. And I was like, Thanks, mom. And so I keep it on my desktop. Because I have like asshole tendencies, but because everybody has a bad day, you know, so you want to make sure you don't take that out on your coworkers because you have to hang out with them. And communication is a small community, even though there are lots and lots of people. I know you go to a conference and you're like, oh, wow, you've been in the industry a while and now everywhere you go, you see someone you know or used to work with. So if you burn those bridges, it's -- there's only so many places to work and they're gonna be like, "Oh, I worked with that person. They were awesome!"