It was 8am on a Friday morning. There were seven of us enthusiastic writers awaiting the bus that would be taking us to to Livermore for a field trip. It was the first field trip of this kind any of had ever been to, we didn’t know what to expect. All we knew was that we were excited for what was to come. It was a lengthy hour and so drive, we had this huge school sized bus all to ourselves. After an hour of joking around, brief naps and snacking we arrived to Los Positas College. We were greeted by a very modern campus with beautiful scenery.

As we walked into Los Positas College, we approached a table where a staff member handed us our press passes and offered us refreshments. It was so nice to see our names on press passes, it felt as if we belonged. We were then led into a large auditorium and sat anxiously waiting for the presentation to begin. As more and more schools walked in, the auditorium filled with young eager journalists all ready to indulge in the knowledge we would receive throughout the day.

After about 5 minutes of sitting and waiting while the auditorium filled, the lights went dark and a spotlight was shone onto the podium that sat on the stage. From the left side of the stage, we saw a glowing figure walking towards the podium. It was a young Latina woman who then introduced herself as Shan Berries, assistant producer and midday jock on 99.7 NOW. She gave a tear-jerking speech about her come up and her struggle as a Latina woman making it in the industry. She truly inspired us and made us believe we are capable of doing anything we put our minds to. Her speech had a big emphasis on always working your hardest and being persistent because things will not ever be handed to you. You have to work for what you want and where you want to be, as she repeatedly told us, “Fake it till you make it.”

Following the inspirational speech given by Berries, we were led to our first session of the day. Each session had 4 different workshops led by different speakers that taught various aspects of Journalism. All of us wanted to obtain the most amount of information possible so we split into groups. Emma Lubinger and William Amaya went to a creative writing class, and thought the class was very helpful and allowed them to see the connections between creative writing and journalism. Andrea Sanchez and Michael Aeschbacher joined a lecture about interviewing with the emphasis in Sports interviews. They both agreed that the lecture was “presented really well and taught us a lot about how to keep an interview interesting.” Ryan Armstrong and Deven Irwin went to a lecture about social media management, where they learned about the involvement and importance social media has on Journalism.

After our first session, we proceeded to go onto the next session of the day. All of us decided to attend the same workshop because we felt all of us could benefit from this one. The workshop was a lesson on newspapers. The presentation consisted of brief tutorials of what programs to use. As well as tutorials on how to layout the writing in a creative way, to draw the readers in. We were given various newspapers to show us that to be a good newspaper you have to be different and creative.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, we had to leave a little early and we did not get to participate in the competitions provided for us at the end. Luckily we were there to be apart of all of the workshops and we were able to leave with lots of new knowledge, completely satisfied. Thanks to the field trip and all the workshops we will be able to bring all our new found knowledge to Spartan Ink and hopefully see the quality of our writing improve.