By Siti Noriezam binti Mohd Zamri
“Explore more, then you will find yourself throughout the journey.”
These are the words that keep hovering in Noriezam’s mind throughout her lifetime. These words are too precious to her because the real story behind the quotation is that these are the last words from her late father before he passed away.
The words are so important as that set a starting point for her new journey. Subconsciously, it inspired her to study hard, get into the university and seek a better job to help her parents later.
Siti Noriezam Binti Mohd Zamri, also known as Noriezam, is a small-town girl who always appears in her baju kurung whenever she goes to class. She was born in Pahang and currently lives in Jengka 13, together with her mother and stepfather. She completed her secondary school education at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Jengka 12 before entering IIUM to pursue for her first degree.
Being a person who grew up in a small-town village, Noriezam knew that she would not be gauche and awkward to do village works such as fishing, housework, or even going into palm oil plantation.
Furthermore, Noriezam becomes an orphan since she was 16 years old when her father died on 29 April 2015 due to heart attack. When her father dies, she felt losing hope to live in this world. Half of her soul went with her father.
While time flies, she started to gain confidence and became motivated to be a better person.
Like many other people, she also has a dream. A dream that nobody would expect her to have. She would like to further her studies in mass communication and become a media practitioner, involving in the multimedia and production field.
Having an introverted personality who loves to convey her emotions through art – taking a picture, drawing, making videos, and writing an art journal, are among her favourite hobbies in her spare time. Furthermore, she also has basic skills in video editing. So, she wishes to be involved in multimedia and video production field, so that she can produce something interesting and creative.
Hence, there is no denying that Noriezam is very determined in art and multimedia since she was in secondary school.
Being a person who loves to sit in front of television watching Buletin Utama on TV3, she has built a neutral view on politics and seeing it as a controversial issue. Although she might not be interested in political field but having some knowledge in all aspects are also important to be a media practitioner.
Unfortunately, her biggest weaknesses that she holds within herself is all about ‘communicating and socialising’.
“How can an introvert person like me be a crew production and deal with different kind of people or even become a media appearance? That is impossible!”
This thought always plays in her mind. This makes her afraid to step forward into the production field.
But everything has changed when the word “explore more” that Noriezam has lived by – have the power to control her mindset and changed her to be more confident and learn something new.
“Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defence) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.” – Abraham Maslow
To achieve her ambition, she pursues her degree, specialising in Integrated Media Journalism (IMJ), intends to develop her potential and soft skills in multimedia and media production.
Throughout her journey, she realised that IMJ is not about broadcasting and being on television only, but also including behind-the-scene works such as editing, advertising, branded content, multimedia, digital and internet, and managing content.
Specialising in IMJ is the right choice for Noriezam because she believes that this field is also interrelated to art. As an example, she can use her artistry skills whenever she does the editing, videography, content creation, and managing social media posting.
She then, involved herself actively in IIUMtv since her second year and she currently holds a position as an editor for the production of ‘Girls Out Loud’. As an editor, she needs to deal with tons of editing works such as editing a poster, producing an opening and ending montage for the show, still, and YouTube thumbnail.
“It all starts with what you do before you put your finger to a keyboard”. As stated by Noriezam, that was such a brilliant quotation that she took from an website, an article written by Maggie Butler titled ‘The 9 Habits of Highly Successful Content Creators’. These words have a special meaning in giving her motivation.
To Noriezam, being an editor is quite challenging, especially nowadays during the Remote Teaching and Learning (RTL). It is because all the university activities must be done online, including IIUMtv. Thus, she is among those who are responsible for preparing a lot of tasks during the pre-production and production stage for the live session.
It is good to say that the problem of ‘introvert’ or shy personality that she has, no longer became a big deal for her. It is because now, she is only interested in behind-the-scene works as she has found her strength there.
Even though she finds the job challenging, she never gives up and always works hard. Her hard work then get paid off when she was acknowledged by the mainboard of IIUMtv. They said that her montage video was very creative and attractive. Even though she earned a compliment, she still needs to learn and improve more, so that her shortcomings and weaknesses can be fixed.
Day by day, Noriezam had gradually gained more confidence and she recently dares to challenge herself to be an editor and content creator for her own ready-to-wear business. To enhance her business and communication skills, she recently read a book written by Jamal Sifubads with the title #2CommaTribe Mindset.
As time goes by, Noriezam hopes that she will secure the post as an editor or content creator in any television commercial or production later in the workplace.
She never expected that she has come this far and being a different person from what she saw herself four to six years ago. She always remembers that Allah’s plan is always the best.***
(This article is written as part of the individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)