Advisers are often lifetime learners

Every year that passes, I find that I know less than I thought I did.

It is only recently that I decided this is not necessarily a bad thing. Throughout the past few weeks, I’ve stepped far outside of my comfort zone while working with multimedia tools. A month ago, I had never even listened to a podcast, let along attempted making one.

I think that a part of the reason I avoided podcasts, as a listener and a producer, is that I forgot about one of my favorite quotes from Richard Rhodes:

“If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.”

This doesn’t just apply to the act of writing, but to any creative act. I didn’t think that anyone would want to listen to a podcast about the things that I found interesting. And I struggled mightily with what to base this podcast around.

After speaking with my mentor, I decided I would make this podcast about my own future aspirations, but focus it through the lens of someone who has already done it. After years of being a journalism adviser, Bill Hankins began working for a newspaper and telling human interest stories.

These are the stories I always return to, and enjoy the most. They are the stories I want to tell. So, my podcast became a human interest story about how to tell human interest stories.

The interviewing portion was the easiest part of the assignment. I loved conducting interviews, so it was a real treat to put my former teacher under the lens. Arranging and editing the audio files was another story.

In my first blog post, I wrote about my tendencies to avoid technology. That is mostly out of fear of the unknown. Even though I’ve since worked with a lot of technology that seemed intimidating—including audio editing software—I was still constantly worried I would make a mistake.

It was through the advice of my current instructor that I overcame that, and it was simply by following her advice; save often. Even if you make a mistake—and I made plenty—you can always take a few steps back and try again.

My hope is that, after enough practice and education, I won’t have to take many steps back.

So, I hope that you enjoy my podcast this week. I hope that Hankins’s journey will be my own one day. After years of teaching young folks how to tell stories, I want to attempt to tell some stories of my own.