Finding Their Voice

Finding your own creative style is something that isn't just limited to art majors. Communications students are also in that same boat as they go through the struggle of trying to find their own style and voices in their work. Advertising and PR, Journalism, and Film, Television, and Media majors all understand that there is that uniqueness that needs to be prominent in their work that makes it their own and stands out from others.

Each program features an array of different courses that help undergraduates develop the foundation of their future careers. These classes that are included in the first level courses include Media and Society, Introduction to Digital Media Production, Writing for the Media, Law of the Mass Media, and Media Industries.

These core classes are just the start. They introduce all Communication students to the basics of writing in AP Style and provide them with the necessary skills such as editing in many different programs while also providing the different sets of regulations they would deal with while working in the field.

The programs provide students the opportunity to critically evaluate their work and open their minds to new topics and ideas they would've never thought of before. They are also able to get a feel of what it would be like to work with their peers and be open to criticism.

There are several classes that help students learn hands-on about all the different types of work they'd work on, such as for AD/PR majors in Advertising Strategy and Copywriting, where they would plan, create and prepare certain advertisements for print and different platforms. When in the Journalism major, students would hone in their writing skills by writing for the school paper, The Bulletin, where students could also have the opportunity to take leadership positions as editors. Then in the media program, there is Creative Producing, which helps teach students how to understand the fundamentals of storytelling and introduces them to script development.

The latest addition of classes in the Journalism program, such as Feature Writing and Digital Magazine Production, also help students hone in on their own style by providing them with the opportunity to try out different styles of writing while incorporating their own.

"Being able to write for The Bulletin was the most beneficial to finding my voice," Journalism major Jasmine Nguyen said. "It's because we were given various opportunities to write on different topics which in turn made me practice using my own voice and helped me develop my own voice."

The Bulletin was just one of the many classes that allowed students to take on the role of the voice for the campus. This provided students with a basic understanding of how a news publication is run and allowed them to learn how a newsroom is run with deadlines and writing under a word count too.

Some students have been caught in the struggle of finding their voice throughout the course of their time at Dominguez Hills while others are barely figuring their own out in their last semester.

"Figuring out your own style and voice is such a rewarding thing," Adam Rodriguez, AD/PR major, said. "Once you find it, it's something that's a lot of fun to work on and through these different classes I've taken get to find new things to add onto it."

Finding your voice through these classes is just a stepping stone to get students prepared for the real world. It's just a small taste of what the actual jobs students will be faced with such as writing on deadline, being news literate and aware of what constitutes news, and many other skills.