Day Nine: Getting prepared for the end

by Sofia Perez, June 25 2020

It would be a lie to say that I haven’t been feeling the pressure of deadlines in the past few days of Mosaic. As I woke up this morning, I fell immediately into a stressed mood — even as I logged into our daily Zoom call, I was worrying about how I was going to complete the day’s work.

Thankfully, the morning Zoom meeting was able to lift my spirits as Sharon Noguchi asked how everyone was doing on their stories. Weirdly enough, hearing other students talk about the struggles they have been experiencing with their stories was comforting for me to hear. I felt as if I wasn’t the only one having trouble finishing my story, and that it’s normal for journalists to feel stressed about their writing.

After the morning welcome, Joe gave a presentation about opinion writing in journalism. He touched on a number of topics, such as the typical word count for an opinion piece, along with the dos and don’ts of opinion writing. I felt that it was very informative, especially since I haven’t yet given opinion writing a chance in my journalism career.

Later during the break, I spent time working on my story and conducted a last-minute interview with two sources. I didn’t expect it to last for so long, but it ended up cutting into my class time! Luckily, I was able to let Sharon know that I was going to be late to the presentation that Mosaic Alumna Patricia Wei gave to our class.

Though I was not able to sit through the entire presentation, I was still able to touch base with my Mosaic peers and instructors about our stories.

Overall, interacting with my Mosaic peers and instructors allowed me to get into a better mood, which better prepared me to work on my story.