The End of Another Semester

I am happy to say I survived what was one of the more stressful semesters in my life.

Four classes and a full time job. To be honest the Job (NewAssignment.Net) has probably been a greater learning experience — but let’s start at the beginning.

Lessons learned from school

  • I made my professional website which I will upload to djcohn.com soon. Also learned a little Flash
     
  • Will have a story published in CJR in January
  • Furthered my intimate knowledge of the workings of Web 2.0 and the changing media landscape
     
  • Had several stories published in small newspapers around the country
  • The big critical issues scandal (Don’t worry wasn’t me — but I did hate the prof. Sam Freedman who unknowingly treated me like a child through his lectures).

The big news for me was my first editorial position. More importantly,
I am working with a small team of very capable and intelligent
individuals on NewAssignment.Net — figuring out how we can bring open
source practices to journalism. While this work has kept me from
freelancing, it has been very rewarding, eye opening and is giving me a
chance to break out of the intern cycle — where I never intend to
return.

  • I blog regularly now, just not at Digidave
  • Learning the in’s and out’s of editing
  • Figuring out how to build traffic for a blog — Happy to say NewAssignment is on a steady upward track
  • A deeper appreciation and understanding of the phrase "my readers know more than I do"
  • Drupal — robust open source software that can build community websites
  • Insight into exactly what it takes to create something out of nothing — from idea to implementation
  • The importance of effective communication with coworkers — I’m
    lucky that the NewAssignment team is both clear, concise and motivated
     

Of course — the lessons learned are far greater than can be summarized in a bullet point list. Let me tell you why

  • Bullet points aren’t complete sentences
  • Everything in life is nuanced and isn’t always organized in chronological patterns
  • I just finished the semester and I’m catching up on sleep while
    typing this — so it’s just a list of the first things that come to my head
  • I will continue to learn both in school and at NewAssignment

Onward!!!!

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