Television Broadcasting & entertainment journalism!

Back in April, pretty much immediately post-failing at the getting The Best Job In The World (ha ha), I had been truly bitten by the traveling bug and had decided to take courses to get me certified to teach English overseas so I could take a year off from my journalism/media career path and just long-term travel. It made a lot of sense at the time. My two-year Journalism diploma program had just been completed and the whole TBJITW experience had lightened my parents up at the thought of me traveling far away from them.

Since my senior year of high school, my intentions had always been to complete a two-year Journalism diploma program at Grant MacEwan, followed by a two-year Television Broadcasting diploma program at Nait (The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology). Before getting involved with TBJITW this past year, I had still intended to carry through with this plan (I had even already applied for Nait just before applying for TBJITW).

Around June I was informed of my acceptance into the Television Broadcasting program but at that time I had also already completed a five-day foundation TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course and now had specialization courses to complete online to get my complete teaching English certification. So at this point I was seriously wondering what I should do.

And as ridiculous as it sounds, So You Think You Can Dance made me make the decision I’m proceeding with now. Seriously. If you follow my blog posts, then you’ll know that I blogged my thoughts about Season 5 this summer and even though I wasn’t hardcore about it, I thoroughly enjoyed writing about the show and the dancers and my take on things. And that, along with doing some of the legitimate journalist/blogger interviews with actual legitimate So You Think You Can Dance dancers and choreographers this summer, reminded me how much I want to do entertainment reporting, broadcasting and writing and television blogging and all that stuff in that genre, for a living.

That’s what I’ve always been most interested in. That’s what I’ve always wanted to end up doing and just the little taste of it the last few months just by doing some personal blogs and getting the opportunity to do a few my-favourite-television-show-related interviews, kind of rekindled that flame inside of me. That’s what I’m passionate about..

At the same time, I found that there were issues with my top three country choices that I had wanted to teach at: South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, that made me feel like maybe it wasn’t the best time to go and do this. So I decided, since the rest of my Teaching English certification is all dependent on completing courses online, and there really isn’t any deadline coming up fast for that (because I had selected the Advanced TESOL Diploma Program, and therefore got the option for five specialization courses, which doesn’t have to actually be completed until two years from now), I would just really take my time in completing the courses online in the next two years, while getting my Television Broadcasting credentials done as well!

And I’ll just try and feed the traveling bug by doing small trips here and there for now…

Also, with this additional two years, I have more opportunities to try and get some internships that will help steer me in the right entertainment direction. Try for an entertainment internship with CTV… try for MuchMusic or MTV Canada or ETalk or maybe even hopefully get some internships in the entertainment industry in America. Who knows.

Anyway, school starts on September 8th and I’ll also be doing a short internship with Metro Edmonton Aug. 31, Sept. 1, 2, and 3 to help get me back into the journalism swing of things! :) I’ll be sure to blog about that week, as well as about my television broadcasting experiences and whatever else I end up doing on the side this year.

But yes, I feel this update post is long overdue. So I hope that answers your ‘What’s Linda doing now… she hasn’t mentioned anything in a long time!’ question, if you were wondering, ha!

Linda :)