<p>Sainclaire,</p>
<p>I am a freshman in Medill, currently in the middle of my second quarter of journalism classes. I’m your fairly typical Medill kid - did newspaper work in high school, have aspirations to work for a certain publication, etc.</p>
<p>Almost all of the Medill '11 people, myself included, definitely have a love/hate relationship with the journalism program.</p>
<p>Classes are challenging and will push you to really get out onto campus and into downtown Evanston to report. That sort of difficultly is expected, though, because Medill wants to maintain its reputation.</p>
<p>What bothers me is the new required class they have for freshmen, starting this year, called Multimedia Storytelling. It’s part of Medill’s plan to make sure that we all graduate with diverse reporting skills that make us more marketable as journalists. But since this is its first year, it’s a highly disorganized class with irrelevant lectures and unrealistic assignments that you’re allowed a very short time to complete. We’re the guinea pigs.</p>
<p>One kid actually got frostbite on his hand from our video project from last week - we had to go into downtown Evanston while the temperature was about -2 and attempt to flag strangers down for on-the-street video interviews. The poor guy got rejected 9 times and eventually went home with nothing.</p>
<p>Despite all the crap you have to put up with in freshman year, from what I hear, the upper-level classes are amazing and truly show you why Medill is the #1 journalism school. Once you’re allowed to pursue your specialization (print/magazine/broadcast), you really feel in your element and start to have a lot of fun.</p>
<p>So I hear, anyway.</p>
<p>So far, I would give Medill a B+ . . . it’s difficult and stressful at times, but that stress is lessened by the fact that 150 kids are going through the exact same thing with you. And after just 10 weeks of class, you look back and realize that they were hard on you for a reason - they wanted you to learn the skills and grow as a journalist, and that is exactly what happens in such a short amount of time. It’s actually really cool.</p>
<p>The first year of Medill isn’t easy - it’s the weed-out year. But it’s well worth it. :)</p>