When I first came to Cal U as a journalism major, I didn't really even know that AP style existed. My high school had no journalism class, no school newspaper, nothing. I came here blind and then one day, when I showed up at the first SPJ meeting and volunteered to be president all things journalism came crashing down on top of me. When I e-mailed the advisor of my new club, telling him that I was almost completely clueless as to what I needed to be doing, I met with him in his office and left significantly less terrified than I was a few hours before. The advisor of the club, turned out to be my academic advisor as well and when he told me that I should take journalism two before journalism one, the anxiety attacks started all over again. I sat down in this class in the front row and he started rambling on about all of the ridiculously long articles that we would have to write and sooner or later started talking about AP style and numbers and abbreviations that I never knew existed. I hated it before I even opened my style book.
That was two years ago. I'm a junior now and AP style has become a pretty big part of my college career considering I am a journalism major, regardless, I'm still pretty awful at it. My life in college is like a light switch, that turns on AP style and turns off MLA, only to turn it back on again. Being both a creative writing major and a journalism major, is a constant tug of war between these two writing styles. In the middle of trying to write a literary analysis, I frequently find my self attributing sources by saying " according to blah blah blah..." like I'm writing a news feature story about Medea. As frustrating as it is for me, I bet my professors get a good laugh out of grading my papers.
That was two years ago. I'm a junior now and AP style has become a pretty big part of my college career considering I am a journalism major, regardless, I'm still pretty awful at it. My life in college is like a light switch, that turns on AP style and turns off MLA, only to turn it back on again. Being both a creative writing major and a journalism major, is a constant tug of war between these two writing styles. In the middle of trying to write a literary analysis, I frequently find my self attributing sources by saying " according to blah blah blah..." like I'm writing a news feature story about Medea. As frustrating as it is for me, I bet my professors get a good laugh out of grading my papers.