I flew to Hollywood, Florida this weekend.
Sounds crazy, right? Well, it gets crazier.
Of the almost 40 hours that I spent in the sunshine state, over 30 of them were in the Coalition of Services and Charity (COSAC), which is a homeless shelter that officially houses about 200 of the southern Florida town’s homeless that other nearby shelters turn away. It’s also home to the nation’s second largest homeless newspaper, The Homeless Voice.
Twenty other college students from 13 different states were also just as insane, and I have walked away with friendships that I have no doubt will last a lifetime despite the fact that I met them three days ago.
But leading this pack of crazy student journalists was perhaps an even crazier guy—Michael Koretzky, the Society of Professional Journalists Region 3 Director.
Koretzky and the slew of other advisers pushed each and every one of us to be better, more creative journalists than we have ever been. They pushed us outside of our comfort zones. They pushed our limits but never went over them. Unlike previous Will Write For Food (WWFF) classes, nobody cried, causing the advisers to all loose their “Who will cry first” bets.
I’ve slept a total of 12 hours in the last four days. I’ve never been this sleep deprived.
I had to reach far beyond my comfort zone. Despite having seen plenty of homeless people in Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park during my internship last summer, I didn’t know how to interact with them at first.
It took nearly all of the time that I was there for me to interact with the residents as if we were dear old friends. Logan, a student from Otterbein University, and I even ended up playing Cards Against Humanity with them in the early hours of yesterday morning. As Fran, a woman who claimed to have a traumatic brain injury from being shot in the head while on duty, played, she used her Zippo lighter to make it easier to read the cards. Surprisingly, she didn’t accidentally catch the cards on fire.
But the area where the advisers pushed me the most was the whole reason I was there: journalism. I welcomed the dismantling of my stories. I even walked up to Koretzky and said, “Will you please tear apart my story?”
I was pushed beyond my own skills, and they had me pushing the lines of what is and isn’t journalism.
I had a story fall apart after asking three questions. I was lied to by sources (yes, plural), and my second story almost fell apart too. Almost. But with some creative thinking and going beyond traditional journalism practices, I was able to not only salvage a story, but produce a strong and unique story that will make a great addition to my portfolio.
After finishing that story, I co-spearheaded an online-only story package about what occurs at the shelter at midnight on a Sunday. When an ambulance pulled up outside of the building and a resident was taken to the hospital for heart-attack-like symptoms, the focus of the package changed.
I took photos and was scolded by a paramedic despite being within my legal rights. Only after capturing the event in photos did I think about writing a full story to go with the footage and live tweets that two other WWFF staff members took.
As a writer, it was strange to think that for once, photos came first.
Koretzky said he was discouraged from starting the program, which marked its sixth year last weekend, because it could break the fragile college students who need everything to be sugarcoated.
That’s bullshit. College students can be pushed. We’re not as fragile as some people think we are. We don’t need to be told that all of our work is good because, quite frankly, some of it isn’t. We don’t need to be protected. Instead, we need to be pushed so we can learn and continue to grow.
I’m going to remember spending a Labor Day weekend in a homeless shelter for the rest of my life. I simply can’t forget seeing things that broke my heart enough to make me want to hug each person in the shelter and never let go. I simply can’t forget the friends who conveniently are all journalists too, and I simply can’t forget being pushed so far that I thought I might end up breaking (and being the person that helps an adviser win the “who will cry first bet”). I simply can’t forget how I overcame it and got the job done.