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Modest, black heels adorn the feet of a clueless child attempting to look professional as she enters the office that will confine her for the entire summer. The heels clack loudly while she stumbles to the front desk asking for her new boss, Jim. She fidgets with an oversized black purse that she bought solely to look professional as she waits to be lead to her first conference meeting. Her walk resembles one of a person intoxicated on alcohol, although she is simply drunk on nerves as she approaches the conference room door. Sadly, I must confess that I was this uncoordinated, naive mess, and that last summer I learned that I knew nothing about writing in the world of journalism, despite being hired to do just that.

Robots, my coworkers at my internship at lehighvalleylive.com & The Express Times were robots. When I entered my introductory meeting, all their heads snapped to me in one swift, deliberate movement, and for a second I swear their eyes flashed red. They all introduced themselves in the same bored, fixed tone of voice, showing either their disinterest or lack of emotions due to containing computer programmed brains. Throughout the briefing, I was made aware of my duties, what I was to report on, and that just like the robots in horror movies, they planned to cause destruction. Instead of destroying cities or societies, they were going to demolish every writing habit I had learned throughout my life.

As if I was a child, not a high school graduate, I was re-taught the basics of composing my thoughts and writing efficiently. My mechanical coworkers in one day demolished everything I had previously learned. For example, titles are usually composed of five or less words, making them seem hard to format incorrectly. However, I learned quite quickly that I did that simple task incorrectly according to the paper’s guidelines. While in school, your titles should contain words that are all capitalized, but at my internship you were to only capitalize the first word and any names, unless you wished to receive a head shake and a red, electronic eyed stare from the boss, Jim. Another stylistic aspect that was hard for me to adjust to was shortening the amount of information given in each paragraph. Details were to be given in shorts bursts, one to two sentences at a time, instead of the four to five sentences format used for essays. One more major writing habit that was hard to break was the continuous use of adjectives. Readers just wanted to get to the facts of the article, there was no need for descriptive language, or at least that was what my boss always told me as he deleted my added “fluff” while I watched in horror. The final and most painful adjustment I had to make was the abandonment of my oldest friend: the Oxford comma. For spacing reasons, one of the most basic rules I was taught in English was declared nonessential and defaced in front of my very own eyes. Despite these changes being minor, it took a while to adjust to my android coworker's ways of writing.

Read, write, and repeat. That is how I practiced learning how to write properly for news. I spent hours writing articles and reading news stories from various sites, such as Buzzfeed, Fox, and CNN. I followed the method of repetition that Malcolm X attributes for his success in gaining literacy. Malcolm X describes this in his own literacy narrative by stating:

In my slow, painstaking, ragged hand writing, I copied into my tablet everything printed on the first page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting. (X 121)

New literacy skills, no matter how basic, can only be obtained through studying and practice. Whether someone is an activist like Malcolm X or a mediocre at best intern like me, the only way to reach set goals, literacy or not, is to work as hard as possible.

Writing across all media is challenging and pushes both the mind’s creativity and patience. I dedicated twenty hours a week for three months to just writing, reading, and testing the limits of my own brain, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I learned how to show creativity while staying in a word limit, how to interview without fear, and the importance it takes to not rush the writing and editing process. Yes, my coworkers were heartless, writing robots, who never used the bathroom despite how much coffee or fuel they consumed, but they helped me grow as a writer and as a person.

They pushed me to make my articles perfect and to master my journalism techniques. Without this internship and the countless hours researching different news writing techniques, I would not have felt as prepared for both my college classes in English and Communication as I did when I came to Seton Hill. Despite the awkward, emotionless talks around the reporter fueling station known as the Keurig,  I will always remember my time at lehighvalleylive.com as rewarding due to the invaluable lessons I learned throughout my summer there.

Black, beat up Nikes complete the casual yet appropriate outfit of a college student on her way to English class. She walks in out of breath from the stairs but confident, waiting to greet her teacher, Dr. Arnzen. She places her overweight book bag on the ground, easily removing the laptop from the largest pocket. Her posture shows no sign of nerves or worry because she knows she’s where she belongs, surrounded by ambitious and intelligent peers. I, with great pleasure, take responsibility for being this girl who has discovered a strength within herself and who can now write for any medium passionately and efficiently.

Work Cited

Malcolm X. “Learning to Read.” Writing About Writing, 3rd ed., edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017, pp. 106-115.