By Hafiz Asnawi
KUALA LUMPUR, 30 April 2015: Experiences may not only be acquired at home, school or even college. Experiences is a continuous part of life that we have to go through and encounter in moving forward. In the process, we have to face challenges and the consequences would be how much we have enriched our knowledge and skills to move forward.
Life is a journey for every day and every moment we discover new things such as friends, skills and even our motivation to go even further. It depends on ourselves to take the opportunities or just leave it untouched.
There is at one time where you have to make a decision whether you have to sacrifice the important part of your life that you love doing the most in order to acquire new knowledge and skills to create a new part in your life.
Our journey started on 27 April 2015 when IIUMToday sent us, a group of four students, who are in the editorial team of the online bulletin, to go on attachment with the New Straits Times (NST) for journalism training. We were given the opportunity to follow the newspaper reporter and experience for ourselves the tasks of a reporter.
When we arrived, we were split with two of us following the reporters to their field and another two stayed in the office to do media publishing and media searching.
“We are really proud to go through and gained new experiences because it is hard to find someone who could teach us the reporting skills. Now we can witness the real job of a reporter and feel for ourselves the experiences of a working life,” said Muhammad Shazni Ong, a communication student, whose specialisation is journalism.
Shazni was assigned to meet one of NSTP reporters at Shangri-La Hotel at Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur for Official Book Launch and Awards Ceremony, The Oil & Gas Year Malaysia 2015.
“I’ve never felt this kind of pressure. It is like you are happy to be in this kind of pressure because our information and research helped those to keep in touch with the earthquake incident that happened recently in Nepal,” said Mohamad Amirul Hafiz Roslan, who specialised in journalism. He was assigned to help one of the reporters and spent the whole day to find new information and update from Nepal.
Siti Aminah Harun, who specialised in public relations stated: “I am very happy and felt very lucky to be here and participated in this tour. I have gained new knowledge and acquired the skills of a reporter and have known some of the reporters and their field of work. This kind of experience is hard to get almost impossible to achieve it.”
‘I am very grateful I have joined IIUMToday,” Siti Aminah added.
Siti Aminah was assigned to help one of the reporters in online media news publishing. The online media news publishing is to collect news given by the reporters to publish it online in their website and other social media.
Meanwhile, Faisal Asyraf, a reporter of NSTP said: “I am glad to teach and introduce the journalism world to people who want to know about us because I like to see someone who is eager and excited to learn new experience and skills in their life. This is because we have to live our life and enjoy while we can, and by learning we can enhance our skills and also implement them in our daily life.”
He also said, ”If you want to be a journalist, everything you write must be precise and accurate, you have to be fast and quick to get the information, otherwise you will have a hard time to remember what you have written down in your notes.”***
Feature image of Mashable