The sky bled into deeper shades of grey as the screen stubbornly displayed yet another delay for my flight back to New York. Outside the glass windows, a storm was gathering, rolling one cancellation after another across the airport.
My knees felt weak as I slumped onto the cold floor, staring at the departure board. Hours had passed since the original departure time, leaving an impatient crowd scattered across the terminal. What was supposed to be a brief layover at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had unexpectedly turned into something else.
Only days earlier, sunlight had spilled across the bright green lawns of the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, where temperatures hovered in the high nineties. Sunscreen and a water bottle quickly became my constant companions at the Summer Media Institute (SMI). It was an immersive workshop for high school students passionate about journalism and communications. From the bell tower to the newsrooms, this university seemed to pulse with the rhythm of storytelling.
Running from June 22 to June 27, 2025, the program quickly pulled us into the fast-paced world of journalism. The first day passed in a blur of introductions, campus tours and excitement. Harrison Hove, interim chair of UF’s Journalism Department and director of SMI, ensured that every student felt seen and supported.
Over the next few days, the schedule is filled with hands-on reporting, filming and pitching. My chosen elective out of the handful of choices, Broadcast News Reporting, allowed me to understand the background of news reports.
My teammate, Allan and I produced our own segment on students’ first-time dorm experiences. We started by pitching our idea to Ms Kalisha Whitman, our professor, who helped us develop it from words to vision. We walked around the torrid campus, conducting interviews and taking footage and spent the nights editing, fuelled with nothing but passion.
Beyond the classroom, UF undergraduates volunteering as Gator-Aides offered a glimpse into life after high school. They shared their journeys, their reasons for choosing journalism, and the unexpected ways their interests had evolved during college.
One Gator- Aid, a sports journalism major who initially considered broadcast journalism, described how her interests evolved during her first days at UF. It left me wondering if my own interests would change once I start college.
By the morning of the final day, Allan and I had completed our report. That afternoon, we gathered in an auditorium thick with both excitement and the quiet sadness of impending goodbyes. One by one, the screen lit up with our projects- news reports, weather forecasts, talk shows and interviews.
Every late-night edit and last-minute adjustment had led to that moment. The applause that followed each segment was genuine, not polite, but proud. A sudden burst of noise pulled me back to the airport in Atlanta. I lifted my head and found the horizon retracting to the colours of dawn.
Only weeks earlier, I had walked out of my final O Level exam at S.F.X. Greenherald International School, unsure of who I wanted to become. But somewhere between newsroom debates, late-night edits and unfamiliar cities, something had quietly settled inside me.
The departure board flickered again. This time, it displayed my flight’s boarding call. Just like the sky beyond the window, I had shifted into something new, a slightly more certain version of myself. For New York, for journalism, and for anything else that followed.
The writer is currently a junior at CIMS, New York
