Joe Here! A.K.A Average Joe or often referred to as “Do you work here?” The third week of my practicum is officially done and I’m going to share with you how it all went down. Now that I’m a few weeks in and gained some trust from my practicum mentor, almost everything I produced ended up going on air! I would be lying if I said I handled that responsibility with the utmost of confidence, there were a few times where I was really nervous and honestly a feeling that I wasn’t good enough. Throughout the week though I discovered that those feelings might not actually be such a bad thing, so here are 2 things I learned during my third week of practicum!

1.Confidence not Confi-DUNCE

We’ve all heard the term “confidence is key” which is honestly great advice, but sometimes too much confidence can do more bad than good. In order to produce content that airs on the radio I thought I would need to be some sort of expert with this super confidence, like a millennial version of superman that’s NOT allergic to kryptonite! Since I didn’t have that confidence I would end up spending HOURS on making content “perfect” that should’ve really taken me 15 minutes!  Instead of hiding this, I decided to share this with my mentor and after an hour of talking and listening to “not so good” content from other producers that ended up on air, it really changed my thinking! Being confident doesn’t equal being perfect, you’re never going to stop learning and growing so don’t think you have to be the best at something right away.  Understanding that I’m not the best pushes me to keep trying and learning giving me confidence in the fact that I know I’ll always try and get there!

2.Go hard or Stay home

My whole life I’ve tried to go the safe route to avoid tripping, falling, and upsetting someone which to no surprise ended up translating in my work during practicum! If I was asked to do something I would accomplish exactly that, too comfortable to go the extra mile and think outside the box. I think my mentor caught on to this asking me this week to go BIGGER if I’m voicing for a commercial or go HARDER on a production spot to create a clearer image! After a few days of this I really noticed a big difference in the quality of not just the content but in my confidence as well! Playing it safe will only take you so far, sometimes you need to go the extra mile to end up somewhere you would’ve have never knew existed! With one week left of my practicum that place is hopefully a job.

Thanks for taking part on this journey with me! Chapter three is now in the books!