MY STORIES:

• Increase in tuition worries local students
• Students rely on scholarships, loans to pay tuition
• Students argue for increased tuition for those who lag
• Tuition increase: Parents worry about narrowing education opportunities

MY BLOG:

The beat I was covering has definitely helped my professional development in such a way that it made me get out of my comfort zone and write about something that doesn’t necessarily interest me, but would interest the reader. It also made me look at things from a different perspective because it is always easy to write about something that the writer likes. I always hoped that I would be going into a field of journalism where I can write about a topic that I want to write about and writing about something else helped me realize that it’s mostly not the case.

Writing about tuition increases made me think deeper about how I can provide a different perspective on something without giving my own opinion, especially when I don’t have a lot of knowledge about the subject. I think the hardest thing for me to do was to not give my own opinion, and leave it up to the sources to direct the story. I know that I won’t always have the luxury to choose what I will write about, but I am hoping I can at least pick a topic, which I can lean towards and hopefully explore it enough so it is interesting to me and the reader.

I also found out that reporting is not as easy as I initially thought. Most of my reporting background comes from sports. I was put in a situation where I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about tuition increase, so it was challenging to make myself prepared before I talked to the community or students. It is important to me that the person who I am talking to knows that my questions are credible. Talking to the students about the tuition increase and finding out what their opinion is made me look at my own views about it. I always reminded myself during the writing process or when I talked to the public that I am only there to report in order to prevent possibility of being bias.

ABOUT ME:

My name is Armin Hamza and I was born in Bosnia. I also lived in Germany for almost 8 years. I have been living in Utah ever since then. I have two sisters and they are both older then I.  My favorite things to do are, play soccer, listen to music, watch soccer, taking photos, art, web design, and everything else that is fun. My strength as an individual is communicating with people that I know and finding out what is interesting about them. My biggest challenge that I had to overcome is realizing that I wont be playing soccer anymore due to my knee injuries, at least not competitively. My biggest challenge that I want to overcome now is approaching people that I don’t know because it will help me become a better journalist. I would like to pursue a Journalism career and see where it takes me. I was originally a computer science major, which I will continue to pursue after I get an undergraduate degree in Journalism.  I would love to live in Europe again some day, but you never know where the world can take you. My dream job would be anything that has to do with traveling. When I look back my life will hopefully look like I was picturing it, no regrets and have fun in anything that I do. My favorite quote is, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” ~ Robert Frost.

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