From going to conferences to seeing monuments to making TikToks in our hotel rooms, the Equinox E-board’s recent trip to Washington D.C. was a great experience.
The first thing there is to talk about is, of course, the conferences. These conferences offered a lot of new information to me as both a writer and an overall journalist. My favorite conference I went to has to be the conference where we were given advice on how to break into music journalism.
This conference gave me a lot of valuable knowledge about not only getting to meet famous people but also how to properly prepare for interviews with them and the importance of treating them like normal people. I also learned that a good story about a small band is more valuable than an okay story about a big band. This is only a small portion of the information I learned and was really meaningful because I personally want to write about pop culture or entertainment as my career.
Another great conference I went to was about writing good feature stories and getting good anecdotes from interviewees. I thought this was really interesting because it taught me what questions to ask in order to really know somebody in a short amount of time. These questions include: “What inspired your career choice?”, “What was a turning point in your life that led you here?” and “What do you truly want for your career?” I enjoyed this conference a lot because it can relate to both my career and my personal life.
Being able to see some of the nation’s most recognized monuments at night was also an amazing experience. I truly enjoyed seeing the Washington Monument lighting up the night sky and taking in the sheer scale of the structure. Another great sight was the Washington Monument reflecting onto the pool below the Lincoln Memorial. Visiting the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was also a memorable experience.
One of my favorite parts of the trip has to have been going to the Newseum. Sadly, we only got to go for about an hour, but we made the most of that hour. I thought it was amazing being able to see newspaper front pages dating back from 1492 all the way to the present day. The amount of historic paraphernalia in the Newseum was awe-inspiring. This includes equipment used for bombs from terrorist attacks, signs that got caught up in the crossfire of massive gunfights and even a piece of the Berlin Wall. I thought this was an amazing place and am saddened to hear that it is closing.
Winning an Online Pacemaker Award was also a big highlight of the trip. This was very exciting because it shows me that all the hard work can, and will, truly pay off eventually. Another reason this made me happy is because I’ve never been a part of an organization that won an award this prestigious. It inspired me to up my game as an editor so that next year we can get an award for not only our website but our newspaper as well.
And finally, I have to talk about my fellow E-board members being a bright spot of going to D.C. It was a very refreshing change of pace to go from seeing everybody in a normally stressful environment to being able to relax a bit and just hang out together. I got to know everybody in a way that I never really thought I would and it confirmed to me that these people are not only my colleagues but my friends.
DISCLAIMER: This article is the sole opinion of Cristian Valentin
Cristian Valentin can be contacted at cvalentin@kscequinox.com
