THIRTY-FOUR student journalists ended up going on the field trip to the SLUG Magazine offices. Chuck Manzanares (12) said he didn’t mind the trip there. “It was kind of scenic, seeing as how the field trip was at 8:30 a.m. with the sun rising.”

After the bus pulled up to a huge parking complex downtown, the students took pictures of each other on the Gallivan Center and in front of urban backgrounds as they walked.

At SLUG, they were introduced to some of the staff and introduced to the jobs that they do and told why that role is important to writing.

The whole process from writing all the way to publishing was described. They were introduced to the people in those positions, Oswaldo Cabrera Valencia (9) said he liked everything about the trip and that the people were nice.

Manzanares said he liked the whole process, but his favorite part is before the publishing.

April Hendriksen (12) said she liked the process of publishing and meeting everyone, but the thing she took away with this field trip was her realization that “you are the news, you create the news.” She’s talking about the fact that she has to find a subject and write something that the general public will be interested in. “You are the news,” she said.

“Although I didn’t like the food, I could imagine myself working at SLUG later on in life biggest difficulty would be finding an article idea, something interesting to write about. Taking pictures and writing something that interests people would be fun,” Hendriksen said.

While finding an article idea might be the hardest part about being a journalist, these students agreed that journalism might be an interesting career. “Being a journalist might be one of the hardest jobs out there. It involves a lot of thinking, but best part is about this career is that you get to choose your topics and you get to choose your hours,” Manzanares said.

Cabrera Valencia said he wouldn’t mind working as a journalist, although his parents want him to be an English teacher. “I can imagine myself being a journalist and working here at this very building and eating the same exact sandwich that I enjoyed while I was there. I’d just be brainstorming and thinking of things to write while enjoying my food,” he said.

All in all, many students that went on this field trip would consider a career in journalism, but there were others that just went to expand their knowledge of photography and journalism. Either way, journalism is a never-ending career: there will always be a need for someone to seek truth and report it.