From the beginning, my project was always very general. I knew I would be researching and writing stories about the Great Lakes, but beyond that, there weren\u2019t many details. What kinds of articles would I write? Would they be long or short? What about the format?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the summer progressed, I found myself doing a little bit of everything. Some of my articles were assigned by my supervisor, but others I had the freedom to discover myself. That led to a wide array of articles. I\u2019ve written long-form articles and shorter follow-up articles, and I\u2019ve compiled lists of Great Lakes related activities for people around the area to use. I really liked this freedom because it allowed me to explore different types of journalistic writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also never crossed my mind that I would be interviewing so many different people this summer. It seems obvious now looking back at it though (how did I not figure out that journalists interview people?) To be honest, I\u2019m kind of glad that it was unexpected. I would have worried about it all of May, and probably dreaded it, too. Before this experience, I was not comfortable at all with the things I do regularly now like calling people I don\u2019t know and asking them questions or asking for zoom interviews with strangers. I made 5 phone calls today, and 1 of them was to the wrong number! I can\u2019t imagine I would have had the courage to do that in May and I have the DCERP experience to thank for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve also definitely increased my knowledge of the Great Lakes and related issues this summer. It\u2019s one thing to listen to someone talk about an issue, and a completely different thing to translate what they are saying into a readable format. It requires a full understanding of the issue, and I didn\u2019t realize how much time has to be put into simply figuring out how to explain a complex idea to someone else. There\u2019s no doubt that the interviews have been a highlight of my experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the beginning, my project was always very general. I knew I would be researching and writing stories about the Great Lakes, but beyond that, there weren\u2019t many details. What kinds of articles would I write? Would they be long or short? What about the format? As the summer progressed, I found myself doing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2576,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[495],"class_list":["post-17265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dcerp-2021","tag-dcerp2021"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17266,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17265\/revisions\/17266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}