”At the School of Advanced Journalism, I learned that I must be always with eyes open wide and my ears pricked.”

The School of Advanced Journalism is a challenging experience. It teaches you new things, but also gives room for discovering yourself, making new friends who believe in you more than yourself and who also may penalize you for your mistakes, because journalism is not just about commending, but also about a bit of admonishing.

 

On the day of the interview for admission, I traveled from Balti. It was a rainy day. I remember my hands shaking. I do not know if it was because I was nervous or because I was cold. I stopped trembling when the examination board members asked me why I wanted to become a journalist. I refused to answer. It seemed trite to say that it had always been my dream, more so because it was not true. I did not want to come up with some implausible story either.

 

The ten months spent at SAJ were full of events and information which we had to absorb in a relatively short time. At first, I felt that my head was about to blow up. Still, I wasted no time on feeling sorry for myself.

 

I used a photo and video camera at SAJ for the first time. I would tell myself that video editing was too technical and complicated and I would never learn how to do it. But I kept trying, no matter how scared of failure I was, and I learned everything shortly, and even found that I quite liked it.

 

It was fun to observe how one colleague after another gave up wearing high heel shoes. I never gave up. Because I had never worn high heels. Instead, I discovered how exciting walking could be.

 

As I used to live in Balti, I did not know Chisinau well. It was challenging. Still, I have wandered the city far and wide in a year. I walked practically everywhere in the city due to SAJ, and I even learned which places were the homeless' favorites.

 

The School of Advanced Journalism helped me open a new page in my life, it was a new challenge, and I hope that I tackled it well.

 

Olga Bulat