On Thursday, the second week at AYA was officially concluded. It’s incredible to think how we have zoomed past two weeks of our program. It also makes me sad to realize that my time at USC Annenberg will be short-lived in about two weeks. I understand that being here for the 4 weeks is a huge privilege and honor of mine, so I strive to get the best experience.
This week was filled with so many thrilling adventures. We received our next AYA project from both Rogelio and Allan! For our Comms class, we had this fun project to produce our own podcast right through our own phone. I did not have much knowledge of editing because I had always thought it would be very difficult. But getting to edit my podcast on an issue that is really important to me made it easy. I realized two things with this project: I don’t have a great “podcast voice” and editing is a lot easier than I thought with the correct apps and a good friend. I had some obstacles, for example, not being able to turn my video into an mp3, and the biggest issue yet, my wifi being horrible. Overall, it was fun to tinker with the different elements of Adobe Rush. For our Journalism class, there were two major things. One being our digital zine and the other was finally creating our own broadcast news story!!! This was such a big project because it has always been a dream of mine to work in a news station. I was unsure what exactly I’d do in a big company such as KTLA or NBC, but after writing my portion of the TelePrompTer script, I knew what possibility it could be for me.
Prior to our team building activity organized by Brittany and Karen, we had the opportunity to eat at a real USC Dining Hall. My expectations for this were really high. Though they say UCLA has the best university food, I wanted to give USC a chance to prove that wrong. I did not. When I review anything or any sort, I always have honest opinions. The USC food was overall okay. It was not the best and that was a shock since USC is an expensive school; my idea prior was that it would have a better advantage. Last summer, I attended a program at Cal Poly SLO and their dining hall was the only real comparison I had. I am not sure if this was a smaller dining hall, but it was really compact. My idea of USC’s dining halls was Hogwarts’s great hall. I would rate the food 6/10. After that, we had this amazing scavenger hunt. My group and I had to navigate through the USC campus to find some of the notable buildings that lie there. My team and I were dedicated to being done first. We launched Google Maps, asked for help, and strategized our game plan. We ran and ran and ran so we could not waste any valuable time, and we did not. It was exhilarating because my team was just as dedicated as I was to win. With that mindset, we did. We won a little USC button and a card holder for your cellphone.
This week was extremely fun. My time at AYA has been a dream come true. Not just learning how Communication and Journalism are a crucial part of creating social change through media but being a temporary student at USC. USC has been my dream college every since I understood what college was and being here on campus taking classes and befriending colleagues is a dream come true. Cheers to our 2nd week at AYA!!!! Let’s all make these last 2 weeks the best🥳 ! FIGHT ON TROJANSS!!
Communicating Change 