Last week between the 1-4th of November, the National High School Journalism Convention took place in Chicago, Illinois. The convention gathers journalists and advisers around the country with the purpose of preparing young journalists and leaders for the bigger stories and challenges to come after high school. As someone new to journalism itself, it was not least inspiring to see over 4,000 high school students taking on this weekend with enthusiasm and eagerness.

Our weekend at the convention started off with a lecture by Pete Souza, a freelance photographer in the Washington D.C area and former official White House photographer for President Barack Obama. Souza explained and gave us some insight of what his life looked like, basically living in the white house, but also showed us how well he caught this on camera and how much a picture can speak for itself if you master the setting of it. I thought that it was invigorating to start off the weekend with a lecture like this because it set an example of how much influence and responsibility a job in journalism can have, and that motivation became something to strive and reflect over throughout the following days.

After two full days of going to lectures teaching about leadership, interviewing and photography, my view of journalism as a whole expanded. I was not involved with school journalism back home in Sweden, and I realized that it was because it is not given nearly as much attention as here and that has resulted in becoming almost forgotten. I thought it was inspiring, even though I did not have any knowledge before, to listen and learn how much impact we as young journalists actually can have and how important it is to acknowledge.

Chicago itself made the whole idea of the convention bigger.  I believe that they wanted to inspire young journalists to think bigger, so they used a big setting like Chicago to really open up the scene for big possibilities and inspiration, a success in setting the scene according to me.

The convention did not only open up my eyes for how interesting and big journalism can be, but also for Chicago the city, and how important it is to present and plan ahead before any project, article, photograph or activity.