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[nedrahoward]

Mastery Journal

When I hear the word “thesis,” I get so nervous because before I decided to go back to school, I would hear good and bad stories from friends and family about writing a thesis. According to Oxford dictionary, “a thesis is a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved. “

In this course, not only did it teach me how to write a thesis but having me put my focus on how I want my website to be for the future. I did get stuck on the intro and lit review of my thesis. When I made the outline of it, it seemed as if I had it all together, but once I put it down, I became distracted.

With this course, it put my mind into perspective of what I want my goals to be for my website and my career. When preparing my capstone project in weeks prior, I had to jot down a few ideas and weigh the pros and cons of each subject to see if it would be newsworthy. The topic that stood out the most was the one about misogyny. When it comes to misogyny, that can be looked at in different parts and I had to see what parts that I was going to touch on. At first, I wanted to speak about misogyny in hip hop, but that would not have been a newsworthy story, and I had to look at from a different angel. I took a deeper dive into how misogyny started, what women have had to go through from getting the right vote, to running for President and more and that is where the title “Misogyny Unmasked: Power, Politics and The Industry That Silences Women.”

Preparing for the distribution of my article started out difficult because during this course I had to come up with a plan of how I will bring my audience to my website. I posted my article on June 24th, 2025 and I came up with a plan to distribute on multiple platforms by putting together one minute clips of the interviews and put them as teasers on my YouTube channel, Instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook fan page. I reached out to those that I interviewed, Mr 365, DJ Kire, Theo and Delequai and sent them the one-minute clips to post on their pages as well. When you have the people involved post on their platforms, that will get more traction to the website and to the social media platforms.

With this course, I thought it was going to be just about the website and to speak on the capstone project. As stated at the beginning, I saw the word “thesis” and I got nervous. Having the templates is a good way for guidance on how to do each chapter of the thesis.

Everything that I have learned not just in this course, but this past year I will use in my professional life. I will use all the tools from adobe that I have learned to make my content on my website and my social media better. By making sure what I post is newsworthy for my audience and to make sure that I site my sources. I will make sure that I add more to my site and come up with a plan on when to post. When I start to bring in revenue, I can build a team of writers and social media managers to handle my pages.

Now that I have graduated, I am ready to take everything I have learned and apply it to my career and to become the best Full Sail Alumni that I can be.

[nedrahoward]

This course was a lot of work and a challenge for me.  A lot of reading and researching, but I feel this was a good thing because it will push me to be the best journalist that I strive to be.

While taking this course, I learned how to be better at conducting interviews by reading the tutorials. The defining and finding experts video was very informative. Guiding you through on experts and making sure that you have multiple sources. I always thought that I was doing it the right way when it came to interviews, but this tutorial clearly showed me that there is more to it.

Moving forward I will make sure to support my stories with multiple sources such as primary sources and secondary sources. I will also focus on who is the expert on the type of interview that I am doing.  For example, if I am speaking on Hip Hop, I would want to get an expert who is in the industry like an artist, record executive, etc.

Another tutorial that helped me was preparing for an expert interview.  When I use to conduct interviews some years ago, I thought just researching the person and asking the right questions would be enough to attract a specific audience. The prepare a purpose piece will be something that I will be using going forward. Steps on how to contact and set up the interview with the expert was a good piece as well. I used to just set up the interview through them or their PR and send the questions and that was it. These steps to set up a day and time and how long the interview will be, setting up a quiet place and setting up a convenient method for the interview.

Research the expert is a huge deal because if you do not, then your interview will not go the way it is supposed to go. Googling them or going to their website to look their bio.  I look at other interviews that they have done via YouTube. That will give me an idea of how the expert is during an interview and to try not to ask the same questions they have been asked before.

Conducting expert interviews and explaining expertise is something a lot of journalists should always follow to have a smooth interview.  This piece takes you through on how to control the interview, introducing yourself, being organized and always have back up questions. If you are not sure what questions to ask, just ask what makes them an expert at what they do or on how they feel about a certain topic.

This course will help me reach my goals as a journalist by giving the best interviews for my audience.  I want to become a household name and always be remembered as giving the best interviews. I want to also provide a safe space not only for my audience but for the expert that I am interviewing as well.  This way, if I need to interview them again there would be no hesitation.