“We Spend Two Years Figuring Out How To Tell Stories.”

While I am happy at Ball State University, I have to give some love to my (graduate) alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

All graduate programs are not created equal. Berkeley is an elite institution training (future) award-winning journalists who can tell stories across every medium. This is not an accident. When you go to Berkeley, you aren’t just taking classes. You are giving your life over to an intense, in-depth, all-encompassing, life-changing experience.

It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t gone through it. Rest assured, the small percentage of students who are accepted are run through a gauntlet that few are prepared to handle.

When I proposed restructuring the M.A. in Journalism at Ball State two years ago, I spent a good deal of time picking the collective brains of my mentors and former teachers at Berkeley so that we could begin to carve out our own identity. I’ll have more about our program in the near future, but for now you can check out what my friends and teachers are doing the Berkeley J-School: